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BEFORE, AT, 



■ GETTYSBU RG. 






i> ,"<■>' if, j''>t'«I(f . ii'. 



Susquehanna in June- July, 186, 






Swedish Seri'/ 
Bridgino:, . Illustra icd. 
I Tinkers Effect on Geffy^hiv^. 

{•les at Gettysbur.^ 
Hood {Rebel) on Gciiysunri^. 
After Gettyshurf: and at Willianzsp 
"Falling Waters in July, 1863. 
marks on the Beneficial Union of t 
retical and Practical. 5^ 



i^i 



V* Oi 



JP'-'* 






WATTS PK PEYS 



Wf 









NEW YORI 
Pr^nteb, Nos. 10 «& 12 Keadk 




A Lovely, Elegantly Handled, and T^'^oughly Fought Out Battle- 
Pleasant to have been in— Pertinent to the 
Consideration of Gettysburg. 

my. 

won 

1812, 

tiller, in wliicli lit- ob'^v-ivucl "that Tormanssow nevertheless would be foir^ 
liave • tli.wi 8000 oi- 1)000 bad troops." \ 

Un the 25tli July, a brigade of Hegnier's corps, commanded by Klingil,\ 
Kobrin, where it was'sin rounded bj' Tormanssow, and after a brave resistance i.^ 
hours, in which it lost 2000 men killed and wounded, was obliged to surrender}, 
men laid down their arms, with 4 stand of colors and 8 pieces of cannon. 

[The localities of these engagements lie from 100 to 175 miles cAslwards i 
Warsaw, about 200 south-east of Kbnigsberg, and 1T5 south l)y west of Wilna.] \ 

Hegnier endeavored, by a forced niarcii, to support Klingii ; but finding, wU 
in the neighl)orhood, that he had arrived too late, he fell back on Slonin, where 1, 
united witii Schwarzcnherg. \ 

Tormanssow marciiod with a portion of liis force on Prujanj', and detached some 
light troops [Stuart's Uehel cavalry] in rear of the Austrians towards liialystock and 
Warsaw, where the consternation was so great, and whence the panic so widely spread, 
tlnit Loison, who commanded at Konigsberg, marched thence on Rastenberg with 
10,000 men to reinforce Schwar/enberg and Hegnier. 

Tormanssow, embarra.sseil for provisions and jealous of his magazines in Wol- 
hynia. on finding that Schwarzenbergand Regnier were advancing upon him, retired 
and tf)ok post at Gorodeczna. half way between Kobrin and Prujany. Schwarzenberg 
and Regnier pressed forwards, eager to avenge the affront at Kobrin ; but all the en- 
terprises against the detached Russian corps were baffled by the vigilance and judi- 
cious dispositions of their commanders. 

Unfortunately, Tormanssow, not having been joined by his reserve, consisting of 
13,000 men,coui(ronly place 18,000 in position, whilst the confederate force was com- 
posed of 13,000 Saxons and 25,000 Austrians. But the position was a strong one. A 
marsh lay in front and swept around it, affording security to the rear of the right, and 
skirting the left for about three miles to the source of the rivulet by which tlMi nu\rsh 
was formed, and where a thick wood, nearly as long and a mile and a half deep, con- 
^'^■" tinned to bend around within two miles of the Kobrin road, the only line of retreat for 

'&i the Russians and which lay through Tewele. 

'.^ The position may therefore be described as a great half-moon battery [similar to 

^ Union position at Gettysburg and Rebel position at Cumberland Church, 7th April, 

18C5], with the marsh as its glacis and partial Avet-ditch. Over the marsh ran three 
dykes : the first formed the great road from Prujany to Kol)rin ; the second, the 
route of Poddoubno, was not practicable for artillery; the third made a route from 
Cherikow to Kobrin and Brest Litowski. 

i Concluded on .3d page of Cover.) 



LEE ON THE SUSQUEHANNA IN 1863. 

A MILITARY CRITICISM. 

BY t^ 

^ J. WATTS DE PEYSTEll. • 

• V i. .-.e th.t in this ^^J^nncHl^rent^he .^^ ^ 

Id remember that the wisdom °f "^f/'^^^'^t ^ ^eil * * * it is a charity to 
\ far from being our duty, "\^^^i'iy>^° ^^esent generation of the onslaught 
W-^t '^T^rrB^kll^rMo^oS I Prefac^e to his historical romance, 
"nfthe Valleys," VIII. and XVI. 

i-s The«h«p.rl « ^^it which .sKcret U^^.__^^ „„ ,,,, 

, fiSy-cre-.w?.: £"1 "picS3"S'3 ,„. .„,."-N„,..-Ku«.o«- 

,""•"■»• ^°'- 'r '"^'' T- _..„.. ,,;„„„H wnrk. fullv en 



>, okginally published ."he New JoA C,,^ .«^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ , 

t^i-^i;:^^;;:^^"^ o *e a j. sce„es^o, 

, of the most momentous ^o"fl^^^^J";^^'^e\,,ponzed whose 
gaged_a inflict -Jv^te^Xh^^o^^ ,,,ons in- 

tperiors m the w^r^/ ^I'^'l^'lf ' '"^^u-, ' lanet-a few additional 

iicible, have never existed ^^^^P^^^^le value of time; in i^m 

words may be added m regard ^^ ^j^^ m^j^PJ^ ^^\^,^ ^f the want ot |B 

deprecation of ^'^^^ ,'^T''''\ZeTAlck7lue genius in the ,^B 

common sense which demonstrated a lack o t^^^^^ ^,^ ^^^..,,, H 

chief Rebel commander. In *i,fX Campaigns, the Test of ^^B 

published a pamphlet on /'Wmtei Camp^^^^^^^^ — | 

Generalship," which was, -n^-^y^ ^^t 863yanother pamph- ^ 

change in the operations of our armies, in i6 3 ^^ ^^^^^^ 

let on " Practical Strategy' appeared which att^^^^ ^^^^^ ^ 
attention that General (British Army) Hon. b ^^ ^.^^^ ^^ 

C L.authorofthe 'Annals of the Wa,9V0 ^^^^^^ ^ 

alf which arrests Talent; because Genius is creative 



• his " I cllev Dedica- 

any base of. «f^-^^X,re.t general who, under ^v^^ [ll^^^^^^tthen, 
Wellington is the o y gj^^^ -^ ^^,, n.aintenance of a base b I ^^.^ 
career, adhered conMstent^y^^.^ ^^^^^, ^^,^^ ;,,,,/,/, ii.) I,, 

for the greater part of »^'^/^^f "g ' j,, ,vhich was m his c 
l^,se was the whole '^°t\vkh he idea of Washington 
v>ew exactly corresponcU-^^^^^^^^^^ 
for the tmie being was teist army from. M< 

anSe «'/M^''^ « ^'''^'^'''th nfto the Elbe, and cross. 
U^df according to *t,^ Xn it -U »hole d,s nc . ^^_^_ 

i;;rrls;»-'Uon..c.t.=.ntety 

in the summer of 863 1 ^ ,,,^ ,„„„,,y betv,/ 



r 



the latter and the Potomac in its course from WilHamsport past 
the arena of Antietam or Sh^trpsburg. They were not published 
at that time, because the people were so wild in their judgment of 
men and events, especially in regard to miHtary operations, that a 
calm consideration of any campaign was impossible while pre- 
judice was in the ascendancy, and the touchstone of political suc- 
cess deemed the only criterion whereby to judge of a science and 
an art which, however much politics had and has to do with it, 
yet, if it hopes to perfect itself, should have as little as possible to 
do with politics. That these are not, however, opinions formed 
" after the fact" {apres coup) is susceptible of the best proof They 
were first submitted to one of our ablest corps commanders, who 
perfectly coincided therewith, and laid before a military friend 
who was in Pennsylvania at the time and knew the temper and 
dispositions of the people and of things. More recently another 
major-general, U. S. A., who has drawn up the most admirable 
plans, day by day, of Lee's Gettysburg campaign, has enunciated 
the same doctrine. Maj.-Gen. G. K. Warren, and others of high 
rank, coincided in every particular with the writer. Previously, 
and at the time when these considerations would have particu- 
larly interested the public, they were withheld, because they were 
utterly opposed to the views of men who at the time, in this 
country, were considered infallible judges in all military matters, 
just exactly what they, in reahty, were not, as events and they 
themselves proved. 

A theoretic general and a theoretic critic, such as the author 
of the " History of the Army of the Potomac," styled by another 
theoretical teacher "the Napier of our War," must ever place a 
false estimate upon the absolute necessity of maintaining uninter- 
rupted communications with a fixed base, just as a tethered 
animal can not exceed the length of the cord or lariat by which it 
is attached to the picket or " base." Genius will tear up the picket 
and " go it loose" — not a slang expression, but a regular military 
phrase in the "Iron Age," the XVIIth, a century of continuous 
and the bloodiest war — when the opportunity presents itself. On 
such occasions to be trammeled by any iron-clad rule indicates a 
destitution of that common sense which, in its immediate applica- 
tion to the fitting occasion, is simply another expression of genius, 
and this (Genius) is a direct interposition of God through an indi- 
vidual human brain to the opportunity. 

One of the best exemplifications of the want of common 
sense is the course of General Robert E. Lee in Pennsylvania, in 
June-July 1863, firstly in that he seemed to be totally blind to 
the immense results which must have resulted in an audacious 
"Forward" in his iast "sortie;" and, secondly, in that he forgot 



I 



that the object of a sortie is to do as much damage as possible to 
tlie investing forces, but i)articularty to their material, their sup- 
plies and their works. He forgot that many great generals, who 
dared to cut loose from their communications and, like Torsten- 
son, "make war support war," have tliereby achieved the great- 
est triumphs, on record, for their country. Why ? Because in so 
doing' he continually created new bases. Sherman's March to the 
Sea was simply a change of base of a railroad to the base of marine 
transportation. One of the severest charges brought against (ius- 
tavus Adolphus was that he did not march direct on Vienna after 
his victory of Leipsic, 7th September, 1631, and dictate peace in the 
enemy's capital, (2) just as Frederic began with violating the laws 
of theoretic-martinet-strategy with his operations in Silesia in 1741. 
Frederic may be said to have been always " cut loose," vibrat- 
ing, shooting to and fro like a shuttle. Napoleon compelled a 
peace on his own terms in 1797 and 1805 ; in both cases by paying 
no attention to what was happening in his rear, but looking stead- 
fastly to Vienna and to the main army of the enemy immediately 
opj)osed to him, as his objectives. His campaigns of Jena to some 
extent, and of Eylau, were in reality made in violation of the mili- 
tary rule of " securing his communications," in the ordinary sense 
of this misunderstood term. Thus Blucher operated in the fall of 
1 8 13, in 1814 and in 181 5, and saw triumph crown his audacity. 
Although Blucher cut loose from his base on the Rhine after Ligny, 
yet, nevertheless, he simply changed his base, beause the British 
army then constituted a new base to him. 

Hannibal, and all who did greatly like him, succeeded through 
their own consummate common sense, or audacious genius, since 
it is admitted "the Carthaginians did not beat the /Romans, but 
Hannibal the Roman generals." He got no victory but by his 
own individual conduct." [Scarce Trad, No. to. Series pro and con 
a Standing Army, 1697. Page 9.) How often have great generals 
cut loose from their communications and achieved wonders com- 
mensurate with the risk. One of the severest charges — repeated 
for emphasis — against Gustavus-Adolphus was that he did not 
march directly upon Vienna after Leipsic, 1632, and dictate peace 
in the enemy's capital. Oxenstiern, one of the wisest heads that 
ever lived, urged this very course. (3.) Chancellorsville, in Lee's 
case, corresponded to Leipsic. From Leipsic to Vienna, as the crow 
fllies, is three hundred miles ; from Chancellorsville to Philadelphia, 
by the same route, Lee followed, is about the same distance. In 
1,632 roads were only such in name: in 1863, these were not only 
ma&adamized, but there were parallel railroads. Between Leipsic 
and Vjenna rise fearful mountains and rivers, as a rule not ford- 
able and subject to sudden floods. 



It is more than likely that had Napoleon, in 1813, carried out 
his own plan, which he projected at Duben, which was traversed 
by his marshals, and operated "Forward on Berlin!" with his 
left, the campaign would have terminated just the contrary of 
what it did immediately afterwards at Leipsic. Oxenstiern, 
one of the wisest heads that ever planned and counseled (who, 
in after years, 1641-45, found a perfect executive in Torsten- 
son), urged his master Gustavus to move onwards to the Danube 
after his Leipsic, in September, 1631, as did Horn after his sub- 
sequent astonishing passage of the Lech in 1632. Thalheimer 
places this in the clearest light. Recent researches have de- 
monstrated in a great measure, that politics, not strategy, influenced 
the Swedish monarch fwi to march southwards, and the lure of 
ambitious aggrandizement blinded him to the prize of military 
success. The very political reasons which arrested or diverted 
Gustavus should have urged Lee onwards, for the recognition of 
the Confederacy lay in the direction of Philadelphia, which was 
open, and not on the route to Washington, which was barred by 
the army of the Potomac. (See note Lech, Bridging, &c.) 

Chancellorsville, in Lee's case, corresponded to Leipsic. From 
Leipsic to Vienna, as the crow flies, is some three hundred miles. 
From Chancellorsville to Philadelphia, by the route Lee followed, 
is almost the same distance. 

Throughout the campaign of Chancellorsville-Getty.sburg — 
for the two battles and concurrent operations in reality constituted 
but one campaign — and the writer will even maintain that Gettys- 
burg was the fruit of the flower Chancellorsville — Lee was con- 
stantly demonstrating the inferiority of his generalship. If ever a 
commander was outgeneraled, Lee was by Hooker in the initia- 
tive operations around Fredericksburg. Little credit is due to 
Lee for what was done in the Wilderness to retrieve the first baulk. 
(Exactly force of Napoleon's Table Talk, pages 19 and 21.) 

That Lee was not utterly defeated there, is not due to his own 
capacity, but to the incapacity of those who could have delivered 
mortal blows more than once and did not. (4.) After this, when pre- 
paring his "last sortie," Pleasonton developed his whole plan of 
operations, and had Hooker enjoyed the full powers to which he 
was entitled, he could scarcely have failed to have crushed Lee. 

When the first reliable news of Lee's invasion of the North, in 
June-July, 1863, readied Tivoli, I pronounced the movement "the 
last desperate throw of a gambler, who recklessly stakes all his 
remaining fortune on a single cast of the dice." Satisfied of what 
must be the inevitable result, if the Government displayed com- 
mon-place energy, and profited by the examples furnished by the 
conduct of great generals in parallel situations — lessons with which 



i 



military history abounds — the letter, following, was written and ad- 
dressed to the President. As was afterwards discovered, the view 
taken of the case therein coincided, almost word for word, with the 
counsels of the wronged but prescient Hooker. This letter was l>eld 
back by a person, Jas. H. Woods, Es(i., deceased, to whom it was en- 
trusted to forward, and, when too late to have any effect, was re- 
turned. Subsequently the editor of a leadingjournal, friendly toGen. 
Hooker, desired to publish it. Such was the disgust — if the expres- 
sion is permissible — however, consequent upon the escape of Lee, 
that it seemed useless either to propose anything like a common- 
sense plan of operations, or hope for better things as long as any 
trusted ^//^, or whoever directed or controlled military movements, 
was retained as supreme military director atWashington, or exercised 
influence or authority there over the generals in the field; since it 
seemed to be understood that the general interests of the country, 
especially in June-July, 1863, had been sacrificed in a great 
measure to prejudices or personal dislikes, want of comprehensive 
views and conseciuent errors in judgment. The result proved the 
correctness of Hooker's judgment, and this letter is printed to prove 
that he was not alone in his convictions of what measures were 
necessary to insure success. A few thousand veteran troops (A), 
in addition to those on hand in Maryland and at Washington, 
thrown upon Lee's communications, would have terminated the 
career of that Army of Northern Virginia which escaped from 
Gettysburg to protract the war for twenty months and cost the 
.country hundreds of millions of dollars and the lives of more 
soldiers than had been squandered in the two preceding years at 
the East. That the Rebels feared this very movement is abund- 
antly proved by the following extracts from the journal of a Union 
general, taken prisoner, 2d July, at Gettysburg. "At ISLirtinsburg, 
which was crowded with Rebel wounded, it was authoritatively 
reported that a brigade of our cavalry was not far distant, and its 
coming was momentarily expected. Fears were entertained that 
the two brigades of Pickett's division, which had been stationed on 
the Peninsula, and were hastening to join Lee, would be cut ofif." 
"Both in Martinsburg and Winchester, Loyalists were jubilant and 
Rebels dispirited at the prospect. The latter anticij^ated the 
failure of Lee's army to recross the Potomac and admitted, even if 
it did, it would only be to fall into the hands of troops they expected 
we tvould cross over on our' ponton bridges beloio Williamsport for 
the purpose" 

"TivoLi, June 30th, 1863. 
" His Excellency, President Lincoln. 

"Sir: — You hesitate to abandon unimportant posts in order 
to concentrate their garrisons around Lee, the papers say because 



i 

it would not look well abroad to give up any ground we have won. 
Was such the Practical Strategy of Bonaparte in his most glorious 
campaign in Italy in 1796? When it was necessary to oppose 
Wurmser he abandoned the siege of Mantua, left his one hundred 
and forty siege guns in his works, marched to meet and beat the 
Austrians, and, then, when the armies of succor were disposed of, 
returned before Mantua and settled its fate. No great general, 
no sensible man, no man of average judgment, hesitates to 
sacrifice a lesser good to secure a greater. Great generals look 
to ends and weigh means only in their relation to the attainment 
of great ends. 

" If chronic lethargy, or rather apparent cln-onic .lethargy of 
conception can be shaken off, Lee is between the upper and 
nether mill-stone, provided the concentration of troops affords 
sufficient power to the machinery to grind him to atoms there. 

"Your Excellency may consider this letter as of even less im- 
portance than the offer I once made you of good troops, and sub- 
sequently of a good officer, W . P. W— ; but history and 

eternity will hold you responsible for the partial or entire ruin of 
the North, when we offered you our blood, and our children, and 
our means, without (I am speaking of the people, not politicians) 
stint or selfish thoughts of ourselves. 

"Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

[Signed] "J. Watts Dt Peyster." 

[From pamphlet " The Decisive Conflicts of the Late Civil 
War, or Slaveholders' RebeUion : Battles Morally, Territorially 
and Militarily Decisive." New York, 1867.] 

Escaping through a series of chances, the occurrence and suc- 
cess of which no human being could have taken into consideration, 
Lee had an opportunity of immortalizing himself. Had he pro- 
fited by his gain of time, he could have struck a blow at the North 
— he could have plunged his steel so deep into its vitals — that, 
even if it eventually did recuperate, the shock would have given 
a long lease of hfe, if not foreign recognition and independence to 
the Confederacy. Had he crossed the Susquehanna, Philadel- 
phia could not have been preserved from the visitation of his 
army, and New York might have seen the "Stars and Bars'' upon 
the heights of Weehawken and felt its shells and other missiles, 
even if a superior navy hadi prevented the triumphal entry of the 
invader. Pennsylvania was full of food — food of every kind for 
an army — and Lee should have recollected the promotion of a 
Russian sergeant by Suworrow, "the greatest soldier Russia has 
ever produced or, perhaps, ever will produce" (Marston, 274), for 
a saying erroneously assigned, like so many other good things, to 



Napoleon. Suworrow having propdTinded the question, "how an 
army tlireatened with starvation should supj^ly itself with pro- 
visions," and getting no satisfactory reply from his generals or 
staff, was delighted with a response from the ranks, "■From the 
enemy/" Lee could have acquired everything that his army 
needed, that the revolted States required, from the enemy, and if 
Meade did not-(to use Doubleday's expression) let Lee "severely 
alone," Meade would not have greatly embarrassed Lee; not from 
want of will, not from lack, perhaps, of inherent skill; but from a 
defective moral organization which, in crises, seemed to paralyze 
great gifts and neutralize his application of the superior forces 
under his control. 

July 27th Lee's main army was at Chambersburg. Examine 
Swinton's "Twelve Decisive Battles," 318, and see what the 
" Napier of the Rebellion " [sic) has to say on the subject. 

Simultaneously with the appearance of the Rebels in the 
vicinity of, or before, the Capital of Pennsylvania, June 26-28, 
Hooker crossed the Army of the Potomac into Maryland. To 
all intents and purposes, if Lee had intended to push ahead, he 
had at least three days the start of Hooker. On the same day, 
27th June, Ewell was already operating at Carlisle and York, the 
divisions of his corps scattered over a front of forty miles, so that 
they could have forded the Susquehanna at several points at once, 
scattering the [)rovisional defensive levies like chaff. Supposing 
that Lee had ninety to one hundred thousand men, which he had 
before he turned back to Gettysburg, he could have sent one col- 
umn of twenty-five thousand (one of our ablest strategists says five 
thousand would have been sufficient) due north-east into the coal 
regions, where tens of thousands were expecting him, and would 
have welcomed him with a destruction of property almost beyond 
calculation. T' 's inroad would have put an end to getting out the 
coal needed by our navy and manufactories, especially for articles 
for the use of both army and navy. The main body could have 
kept on to Philadelphia, while to the right a flying column could 
have made a circuit through P^lkton, Wilmington and Chester. 
This may seem chimerical, but people are too apt to forget how 
near Early came to capturing Washington in 1864, with a column 
variously estimated at from ten to twenty-five thousand men, after 
defeating an army equal in numbers, but composed of troops in- 
ferior to the Rebel veterans, on the Monocacy. (5.) All that saved 
the National Capital was the arrival of -the old Sixth Corps, 
brought round by water from the lines before Petersburg. 

As to any resistance that could be offered to the veterans of 
the Army of Northern Virginia by troops newly mustered into 
the service, volunteers or militia, the idea is simply preposterous. 



The whole of Pennsylvania was alive with militia, both in 1862 
and 1863, and it is very doubtful if the Rebel generals took them 
into account. Policy keeps a great many regular and competent 
officers silent as to the utter inefficiency of any but a few thorough- 
ly organized regiments, such as came from New York, and it is 
very donbtful if even these could have stood up for an instant 
against good tried troops, acclimated to battle in the open field. 
Ewell W3.S already operating at York and Carlisle, the divi- 
sions of his corps scattered over a line of forty miles between 
these places — a line perpendicular to Lee's line of advance, and 
within this angle, more or less concentrated on interior lines, stood 
the Union forces. Now had Lee been actually dependent for 
great success on maintaining his line of communications intact, 
and if this consideration applied to his own direct or his perpen- 
dicular line, how much more applicable to the line which ex- 
tended from this at a right angle down the Susquehanna. His 
sortie had been as much endangered throughout his whole ad- 
vance to the Susquehanna, as it would have been beyond the Sus- 
quehanna ; that is to say if, at first. Hooker had been permitted to 
carry out his plans, or if at last Meade had acted with promptness 
and vigor. Lee had about ninety to one hundred thousand men 
of all arms. His extreme advanced troops, as had been stated, 
were before Harrisburg. The defences of that city, the capital of 
Pennsylvania, in reality amounted to nothing. As regarded such 
an army as Lee had, Fort Washington, which commanded the 
passage of the Susquehanna, even if it had been tenaciously held, 
was no obstacle, since it could be easily turned to the right or 
south. The writer examined into this when at Harrisburg, in 
May, 1867, with Maj.-Gen. S. W. Crawford. That this was so, no 
military mind could question. The passage of the river was not 
dependent on the bridges, since, if these had been destroyed, 
there is a ford at Harrisburg, easy and safe at low water, which 
was the case in June, 1863. The Duke de Rochefoucauld-Lian- 
court testifies it was so, when he visited this country shortly after 
the Revolution of 1776-83. No one can dispute this, because 
market wagons used to avail themselves of it to avoid the pay- 
ment of tolls, and even sheep, the most timid and helpless of ani- 
mals to handle in the water, have been driven across. If the river 
could fall so low when the forests and marshes were as yet com- 
paratively intact, what must it be (1863) when so much of the former 
have disappeared and the latter have been drained. Besides this 
ford in front of Harrisburg, there is another between fifteen and 
twenty miles below, farther down at Bainbridge, above Marietta, 
and a third below the dam below the Columbia Bridge, and the 
dam built to create slack water for the Susquehanna Water Canal. 



10 



[It is said there Are other fords, one even as far down as near 
Havre-de-Grace.] 

The last two fords designated, however, can only be used at 
very low water, but such was actually the case 20th June-ist 
July, 1863. These facts were collected from a variety of sources 
after careful investigation. Much information was derived from 
D. Wills, Esq., a gentleman of very great knowledge of local 
matters and of the highest standing, at Gettysburg. His state- 
ments were corroborated by Hon. D. McConaughy, Es([., 
formerly State Senator and Sheriff of Adams County — a county 
bounded on the east by the Susquehanna — who added that the 
lower ford (only) is difficult for wagons on account of submerged 
rocks. That troops, foot and horse, could get across was proved 
by the fact that some of the local organizations for defence, when 
their retreat was cut off by the premature burning of the Colum- 
bia Bridge, effected their escape by these very fords. 

It is well known that the Susquehanna is fordable, in many 
places, with no enemy to oppose a passage through it and a suf- 
ficiency of materials and mechanical skill to repair the bridges, so 
that, at most, Lee's crossing could not have been delayed but a 
few hours; whereas it was far different with the Army of the Po- 
tomac, which would have encountered ready, organized, ex- 
perienced opposition. In fact, Lee's having got over had every 
advantage, for if the Union forces had attempted to cross, the Rebejs 
could have fallen upon them in detachments as they gained the 
Eastern shore. Again, it must be remembered that between Lee 
and his objective^ Philadelphia (6), there were no organized forces; 
he had no resistance to expect m his front. Lee's position on the 
left bank placed at his disposal all the military and other resources 
of the country between the Susquehanna and the Delaware. The 
only course by which the Army of the Potomac could have hoped 
to anticipate Lee and save Philadelphia was the Wilmington Rail- 
road route, and to avail itself of that there was not sufficient time. 
The Army of the Potomac could receive no considerable valid 
reinforcement from the country East of the Susquehanna ; Phila- 
delphia was an open place and utterly defenceless, and, once 
there, Lee could have concentrated all his troops to fight a battle 
near it; for he had no necessity to leave any garrison behind. When 
Lee selected Philadelphia as his objective, he must have considered 
his Army of Northern Virginia capable of whijiping the Army of 
the Potomac on any field he might select, and that this was his 
conclusion — the complete superiority of his army to that of his 
opponent — constitutes the only excuse for his utter madness of 
fighting at Gettysburg. It may be therefore assumed as demon- 
strated that Lee could have taken possession of the whole country 



11 

between the Susquehanna and the Delaware ; his inabihty to hold 
it depended on the answer to the question whether combatting 
on a fair field of battle, Lee's army could, to a certainty, beat the 
Army of the Potomac, which the Rebel generals assuredly con- 
sidered that it could. 

Putting the fords out of the question, however, there are several 
points where military bridges can be thrown across the Susquehanna 
with great facility, inasmuch as the river, although broad, is not deep 
and is obstructed by islands and bars, while the woods and build- 
ings on either shore would aflbrd more than sufficient material, ready 
at hand, for any number of bridges such as an army as that under 
Lee would have required. After the battle of Rosbach, Frederic 
bridged the Unstrut, says Muffling, in three or four hours, and 
Blucher repeated the operation after Leipsic under the foreman- 
ship of an aged carpenter, who actually had, many years previous, 
worked on the bridge of the great king. Gustavus crossed the 
Rhine on every kind of temporary buoyant materials, himself on a 
barn-door, and Traun, in 1644, established his bridges over the 
same river in the face of a large army and retreated across that 
river with equal success in the course of one moonlight night. 
Frederic, it is true, was following up a flying panic-stricken foe; 
but such was not the case with either Gustavus or with Traun. 
There was iiothing before Lee which could have stopped a 
veteran army for a single hour. The majority of the nominal 
troops were at Harrisburg, and in the presence of veteran troops 
they would have counted as nothing. The temporary Pennsylvania 
levies were as though they were not, and the unnecessarily total 
destruction of the Columbia Bridge presents uncontrovertable 
proof of their condition of mind, and of the military capacity of 
their commanders. 

Simultaneously with the movements of Early down the west 
bank of the Susquehanna, as far south as the Columbia Bridge 
and York, the shire town of Adams County, Jenkins' brigade of 
cavalry was demonstrating before Harrisburg, and this insignifi- 
cant force was driving people wild with apprehension. The de- 
fenses of Harrisburg — as stated — amounted to nothing, and Fort 
Washington, which defended the passage of the Susquehanna 
(repeated to emphasize), could be easily turned to the right or 
south. 

From Frederick City to Gettysburg is twenty-three miles; 
thence to Chambersburg twenty-four miles; to Harrisburg thirty- 
five miles by the most direct route. From Frederick City to 
Hagerstown is twenty-four miles ; from Hagerstown to Chambers- 
burg is twenty miles. Ineithercase the Armyofthe Potomac was at 
least two days' hard marches behind the Army of Northern Virginia. 



The latter always outmarched the furnicr in the ratio of three to 
two, often two to one. In a country full of timber and wooden 
buildings, an army of Americans — natural mechanics, like the 
Finns of Gustavus, who were excellent substitutes for pontoneers 
— could bridge the Susquehanna in twenty-four hours in a (juiet 
or low stage of the water, as was the case at this time, June 26th- 
July ist, 1S63. Now, conceding that the Army of the Potomac 
would have had to lose or devote one day to the repair of 
bridges, &zc., then, even if Lee left no rearguard to dispute the 
passage of the Susquehanna, it would still have been a full day's 
march behind the Rebel invading force. From Harrisburg or 
York to Philadelphia is one hundred miles, with railroads, direct, 
between these points and Philadelphia. There were no troops in 
his front that could have stopped Lee for an instant. The troops 
constituting the garrison of Harrisburg were not trustworthy 
against the veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia. Officers 
who had seen service spoke in most depreciating terms of them. 
Those who were in the place at the time said there was a scare on 
the i)eople ; that they were stampeded. The description given of 
them by eye-witnesses recalls Voltaire's remarks upon the Parisian 
troops in 1649. (Gust's Gonde, 156.) 

Phil. Kearny looked forward to sirch a master-stroke in 1862. 
Leland, in his "Abraham Lincoln," page 149, says that Lee ought 
to have gone to Philadelphia. General A. A. Humphreys, Chief 
of Engineers, U. S. A., in his Obituary Address on Meade, iSth 
November, 1872, page 8, observes, ''///^ j:^reaf object of his \Lee's\ 
campaispi. It was the capture of this city, Phihidelphia.'" (7.) Lee 
could have lived ofif the country, could have levied a heavy contribu- 
tion on Philadelphia and other cities or towns along the route, and 
could have made his way back with scarcely any possibility of 
being overtaken or intercepted by the Army of the Potomac or 
any other army the United States possessed or could assemble 
after the blundering which preceded Hooker's concentration at 
Frederick Gity and subsequently led to his resignation. 

Astern chase, even at sea and in sight, is always a long chase. 
A pursuit by a vessel of equal speed with the fugitive could only 
base a remote hope of success on almost incalculable contingen- 
cies. In this case, on land, the pursued would have been swifter 
than the pursuer. The latter, the Army ot the Potomac, could 
have only hoped to succeed in overtaking the Army of Northern 
Virginia in case that Lee was delayed or stopped, and there was 
nothing in existence, or that could be improvised, to delay or stop 
him. 

It is difficult to conceive the extent of the obstacle to a large 
army with its materials presented by a broad, rapid and uncertain 



13 

river, if vigilantly watched or guarded, especially if this river is 
not too broad for the artillery of the day, and is yet too broad to 
enable an army (seeking to force a passage) to establish a cross fire- 
sufficiently eflective to cover a disembarkation and sweep away 
every obstacle to the throwing over, or construction of, a bridge. 
The Susquehanna is not so broad that field artillery can not play 
Avith deadly eftect on a detachment of engineer troops attempting 
to throw or build anv kind of a military bridge, and yet it is too 
broad for field artille'ry to clear out batteries posted to prevent a 
passage, provided these are skilfully placed, covered, or concealed 
and worked. 

Any one who will study up the details of our Revolutionary 
War, will comprehend at once how it was that the Catawba, only 
five hundred yards wide at an ordinary stage of water, the Yad- 
kin, and the Dan proved such impediments to Cornwalhs in pur- 
suing Greene— in fact saved Greene. Sudden rams so swelled 
these streams that Greene's escape was looked upon as being due 
to the special interposition of Providence. Cornwalhs had, at this 
time, as fine an army for its size as there was in the world. His 
light infantry was unexceptionable. All his troops were m prime 
condition, stripped for pursuit and fight. Nevertheless, if Greene's 
troops had enjoyed any equality, notwithstanding their inferiority 
of numbers, they could have stopped Cornwallis at the Catawba, 
and again at the Yadkin, without any assistance from the ram. 

How often have the Rappahannock and Rapid Anna above 
their junction, mere creeks in comparison to the Susquehanna, 
arrested the Army of the Potomac. Mine Run, a marshy trickle 
traversed one of the best planned movements of the war. The 
pursuit of Morgan after the Cowpens, and of Greene after. 25ih 
Januarv bv Cornwallis, in January and February, 1781, demon- 
strated' the impediments presented by insignificant streams to the 
best of troops and in the best condition, even when following u}) 
forces in everv wav inferior— that is to say "by streams compara- 
tively insignificant" when swollen by heavy and sudden rains. 
(Steadman, folio 325. Gordon, IV. 37-46.) . 

The overflow, 29th-3oth January, 1781, of the Catawba, usually 
perfectlv fordable, arrested the British two days. The Catawba, 
in the ordinarv stage of water about 500 yards in width, although 
with a rapid current and bottom of loose stones, would not have 
stopped and did not stop the pursuers for an hour. The Yadkin 
might have served as an impassible barrier had it been properly 
defended by the weak American rear-guard— but even as David- 
son was out-generaled at McCowan's ford, even so the riflemen 
fled as soon as the main body of the British had passed over. And 
yet both the Catawba and Yadkin could have been easily defended 



14 

by a few steady troops well handled even against Cornwallis, who 
had a veteran light infantry second to none in the world. The 
Dan, over which Greene passed in one day, stopped Cornwallis 
entirely. (Steadman, folio 332. Gordon, IV., 45, 46. Cornwallis 
marched twenty to thirty miles in a day.) 

Is it not perfectly just to assert that the Susquehanna, four 
times as wide and strong as the above mentioned Carolinian 
streams, presented an insuperable barrier to any number of troops, 
however good, when its fordable or smooth crossings — /". e., free 
from rajjids — were defended by five or ten thousantl resolute 
veteran infantry, with plenty of artillery. In the same way as 
the Catawba and Yadkin against Cornwallis, likewise the Dan, 
and, although by the time Greene reached the latter river, the 
militia had nearly all deserted him, Cornwallis with 3000 of the 
finest troops in the world was unable to overtake the 2000 Ameri- 
cans, of whom a great number had not a rag of clothing except a 
piece of blanket. (Tomes, Div.V., Part2,Chap.xcvii.and xcviii.,&c. 

The most extraordinary case, however, of the utter disregard 
of a base and line of communication was when Frederic the Great 
in 1760 moved from Saxony into Silesia to relieve the latter pro- 
vince from the presence and pressure of the enemy. An Austrian 
army under Lascy, and another under Daun, followed close in his 
rear, so that the Prussians seemed as if they were escorted by the 
Imperialists. Yet, notwithstanding Frederic had a huge wagon 
train with him, such was the dread which he inspired that he did 
not lose a single carriage, and with all their vastly superior forces 
the enemy did not dare to attack him. 

Any one who will take the trouble to compare the remarkable 
incidents which attended the escape of Morgan, 1780, and, again, 
of Greene, in 1781, and those of Coligny (Besant's "Gaspard de 
Coligny," 184-185), will be compelled to admit that, if certain men 
representing causes, and causes themselves, are not under the pro- 
tection of God, there is no truth in anything. On the 29th August, 
1568, Coligny, encumbered with women and children, with but a 
feeble military escort, had to fly to escape the persecuting pursuit 
of the troops under the young Duke of Guise. " In the morning 
they arrived at the river [Loire]. It was impossible to wait. The 
river must be forded. While they hesitated, a single voice was 
raised, ' When Israel came out of Fgypt.' All joined in the psalm, 
and, so singing, the ford was crossed. Fortunately, the waters were 
low. Protestant historians loved afterwards to tell how a miracle 
was wrought, and how, when the enemy appeared on the banks, 
the water rose and flooded the ford, so that they, the enemy, could 
not get across. On the 20th of September, the fugitives rode into La 
Rochelle." Michelet(IX.,35i-2)says that The" Refuge of Coligny, 



15 

Conde, and their families and friends, was at Noyers, in Burgundy. 
The Asylum was La Rcchelle, four hundred and fifty miles distant. 
To flv from the Serin to the ocean, traverse rivers, escape pursu- 
ing troops and hostile cities, was to accomplish the improbable ; 
nevertheless it succeeded as it were by a miracle. The Loire 
shrunk to allow their fording, swelled full again to stop those who 
pursued, so that the pursuers Avere captured in the toils they set 
for the Huguenots. [The Linth is an insignificant stream, and 
yet, on the 26th September, 1799, if the Austrian General Hotze 
had not been surprised and killed by the sudden chance fire ot a 
platoon, the French could not have made good their tooting on 
the other bank. The death of Hotze (a very able general) led to 
the utter defeat of his corps or army division, as it may be styled, 
and determined the fate of the campaign.] [Examine Dunlap's 
" New York." (Schuyler stopped by breaking of ice on Hudson, 
which had previously served as bridge for flying French, February, 
1693.) L, 221, Edition of 1840, IL,; Red Man's Thermopylte, a 
log over an unfordable stream, 159, «S:c. 

The Rhine is nothing like as ugly or so dangerous to cross as 
the Susquehanna, and yet a " Flying Column" of two battalions 
of the Sixth Wurtemberg Infantry, a squadron of the Third 
Cavalry and a Reserve Battery kept the German, or Right, bank 
of the Rhine inviolate during the Franco-German War. In fact, 
this Wurtemberg detachment of the " Black Forest" created a 
general panic all over Alsatia, in which the Seventh (Douay's) Corps 
[French] was involved. Only once, 31st August, did the French 
Franc- Tireurs, favored by a thick fog, succeed in crossing the 
Rhine and they retreated very quickly after doing infinitesimal 
damage. . ' . , . , , 

" By making constant demonstrations of various kinds, chang- 
ing position almost daily, making forced night marches and 
countermarches along the river, and by suddenly appearing and 
vanishing at a great many points, this little column continued to 
create for itself a certain amount of importance in the minds of 
the French, so that it was by them soon magnified into the " Corps 
d'Armee of the Black Forest," and created in Alsatia no slight 
alarm and an apprehension that a passage of the Upper Rhine was 
contemplated by the Germans. As will be seen further on, the 
exaggerated accounts of the concentration of large bodies of 
troops in the Black Forest, current in France, and which were 
wholly owing to the untiring activity of this Detachment, were the 
real cause of the sudden retreat of the Second and Third Divisions 
of the French Seventh Corps d'Armee from Miihlhausen to Bel- 
fort." , ^ , 
After the Wurtemberg Black Forest Detachment had been 



10 

broken up, one, the Second liaitalion of the Sixth Baden Infantry, 
and the Reserve Battery of Artillery, sufliced to guard a river shore 
from Basel to Rastadt, one hundred miles. Is it any exaggeration 
to claim that a veteran division from the "Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia" could have effectually defended the crossings of the Sus- 
([uehanna from above Harrisburg to its mouth — at all events for 
a sufficient space of time to have enabled Lee to obtain such a 
start that it would have been impossible for Meade to overtake 
him ? This was the more probable since Meade was making ar- 
rangements to concentrate on Pipe Creek — sixteen miles before 
reaching Gettysburg, where, as General Doubleday says, in his tes- 
timony before the "Committee on the Conduct of the War," " It 
appears to me that the result of occupying that line (Pipe Creek) 
would have been that the enemy would simply have let us 
severely alone and either have taken Harrisburg or gone on ad 
infitiitum plundering the State of Pennsylvania." 

Kearny had indicated such a course in his letter written a 
whole year previous, and Swinton, who appears to have been, 
more than any other writer, in the secrets of the Rebels, says, at 
page 321, of his and Pond's "Twelve Battles," that Lee originally 
designed crossing the Susquehanna and (326) was desirous of hus- 
banding his strength for the execution of his ulterior purpose, 
[since it was not a mere blow and return [a " sortie"] that the 
Confederates meditated, but a permanent lodgment on Northern- 
soilj. Indeed, it is affirmed that the Confederates were promised 
recognition, if Lee could establish himself on Northern soil in the 
Loyal States, north of Mason and Dixon's line. 

Meade was actually affording every chance to Lee to carry 
out his original intention, when Lee, always a "blunderer," ac- 
cording to Lossing (Vol. II., p. loi. No. 2,) and "smitten by 
idiocy" at Gettysburg, as Lieut.-Gen. Dick Taylor, son of the 
Buena Vista General and President Taylor, insinuates at p. 230 
of his "Personal Experiences of the Late War," threw away all the 
magnificent advantages which fortune had vouchsafed and placed 
on his hands and i)recipitated the battle upon Meade — a battle 
which the latter would gladly have avoided at the point where it oc- 
curred. Thus Lee, at his own expense, made the reputation of 
Meade, and re-established the North at the expense of the most 
devoted army that ever followed an over-estimated leader, in 
whom it nevertheless implicitly trusted. 

Swinton and other wiseacres say that Lee's forward was ar- 
rested and that he was enticed to Gettysburg through a blind 
dread of being cut off from his base, as soon as his communica- 
tions were menaced. This is sufficient to prove that Lee was no 
genius or first-class general. 



The majority of all the truly great achievements in war, in 
reliable history, all the magnificent thunderbolt shocks which have 
settled questions in regard to the destinies of nations and let loose 
the torrents of force to desolate and overturn, or civilize and es- 
tablish, have been absolute strokes of audacity, complete " cuttings 
loose" from theoretical bases. Alexander, Frederic the Great 
and Napoleon — likewise two lesser lights, considered lesser ones 
by human ignorance, but equal to the first three in individual com- 
mon sense, intelligence, self-consciousness of power — moved to 
their most marvellous achievements (vom pracfica/bsises in total dis- 
regard to theoretical bases. Wellington, throughout his triumphant 
operations in Spain, had no fixed base, since his base was the navy. 
Even so the finest campaign of our great war, involving a suc- 
cession of victorious collisions, was Grant's campaign from the 
South against Vicksburg, where his base was his steamers on the 
Mississippi ; a campaign which, undertaken previously from a fixed 
base, ended in the fiasco of Holly Springs. Hannibal, greatest of 
generals of all time, according to Napoleon, Frederic the Great, 
Wellington, and all the experts in war, moved like a shuttle, as 
did in a measure Frederic for about six years. The great Prussian 
had no more of a base than he made for the time being, and he 
never hesitated to cut loose from any base when he launched "to 
victory. It was by converting such an idea into a reality — an 
idea expressed in Holy Writ as to spiritual success, " the King- 
dom of Heaven \as it were\ sufifereth violence and the violent 
[persevering, ardent, energetic] take it by force. (Matthew xi. 12.) 
Moreover, the engineering art and science were in their infancy 
two hundred years ago. All the great leaders of the Thirty Years' 
War never hesitated to cut loose from their bases when they were 
determined to accomplish great results. In many respects the 
rules which applied to the great German War are pertinent to 
the Great American Conflict, since, in many respects, the latter 
presents a marked resemblance to the former, especially in its 
confusion of details and in its want of system during the first two 
years; in the total absence of a grand, general, digested plan. Had 
Torstenson paid any attention to his communications in 1644, he 
would not have conquered Denmark, nor recuperated his army 
in Holstein, nor have ruined the Imperial armies. Again, nothing 
made the peace, concluded in 1648, possible but Torstenson's 
plunging loose into Bohemia to gain his crowning victory almost 
in sight of its capital and carrying the horrors of war down to the 
Danube and up to the walls of Vienna. Similar conduct, had he been 
let alone, would have taken Moreau to Vienna in 1800. Such re- 
solution enabled Napoleon to dictate the peace of Campo Formio 
in 1797; of Pressburg in 1805; of Tilsit in 1807; of Vienna in 



18 

1809, &:c., and always actuated Suworrow. Had Suworrow paid 
any attention to theoretical rules of war, he never would have 
swept the French out of Italy in five months, as he did in 1800. 
Generals, possessed simply of talent, conquer at times by obedience 
to rules; generals of genius triumph by ignoring them. Had 
Blucher been the slave to the theoretical principles of war, as or- 
dinary generals invariably are, he never would have carried the 
Prussian eagles from the Oder to the French capital in 1813-14, 
from Ligny to Waterloo in 1815, and thence to Paris in 181 5. 
This miserable subserviency to iron-clad rule, allowed Lee to es- 
cape after Antietam (Lee's Cunning, Gould's Alison, 80) in 1862, 
after Gettysburg in 1863. It proved McClellan was no general, 
Meade no general in any grand sense of the word, as Geo. 
H. Thomas always showed himself to be, or as other men of 
the same ever trustworthy class. The contrary — the prin- 
ciple of Ecclesiasticus (x. 26), " be not slow to act on an 
emergency," — made Grant supreme general, and Sherman 
lieutenant-general. * * Lee became great in the estimation 
of the ignorant masses through the horrible blunders of those op- 
posed to him. No more is needed to prove that Lee was anything 
but great than his campaign in West Virginia in 1861 ; or his 
letting McClellan escape in 1862; or his not going to Philadel- 
phia in 1863; or his going to Gettysburg in the same year, and 
his fighting an oftensive battle there, or any battle at all in this 
district. [The moral effect of Lee's movement on Philadelphia 
would have been momentous, for as a world accepted expert has 
declared with truth, the effect of the moral to the pJiysical is as 
three to one. Such a movement would have demoralized the 
North and invested treason with a strength which it seems upon 
calm consideration could scarcely have been met or overcome. 
The Army of the Potomac could only have been reinforced with 
good troops from the West. This would have occasioned new 
complications, and would the administration have had the courage 
to act like the Roman Senate after Canna; and stand fast and firm 
because any relief at the crisis recjuired time — "time the hardest 
horse to beat." The weakest point in our national armies was the 
necessity of defending Washington, a necessity which has become 
inevitable ixova political ^o-x: military necessity.] 

Lee's campaign in Western Virginia in 1861, was a failure, 
and the hopes centered on him were signally disapi)ointed. The 
Confederate historian of the war, Pollard, commenting on Lee's 
failure to attack Rosecrans, says (I., 171): "Thus the second op- 
portunity of a decisive battle in Western Virginia was blindly lost. 
General Lee making no attem])t to follow up the eneiny who had 
so skillfully eluded him; the excuse alleged for his not doing so 



19 

being mud, swollen streams, and the leanness of his artillery 
horses." See Lossing ii, loi, 2.] 

Lee should have crossed the Susquehanna. The writer never 
hesitated to say so. He pronounced this judgment an hundred 
times since the Army of Northern Virginia broke across the Po- 
tomac in 1863, and urged as the most conclusive proof that Lee 
was not a great general in the highest sense — in the sense in which 
he is regarded by the South and by sympathizers at home and 
abroad — as the most satisfactory evidence, the simple fact that 
he did not cross the Susquehanna in June-July, 1863, and try for 
Philadelphia; aye further on, and, if necessary, come back by watet\ 
following the example of the greatest strategist of antiquity — Alex- 
ander, who had to bring back his plunder from India coastwise in 
ships guarded by a remnant of the veterans who had seen 
the " elephant" in its home and despoiled it. This return by 
sea has been considered by some critics as by no means a 
chimerical plan. A rapid march on Philadelphia would have 
doubtless given him steamers enough to begin the enterprise. It 
would not have been difficult to escape in steamers if Lee had 
been very rapid in his movements. A column sent down the west 
bank of the Delaware, and thence across to Newcastle, could have 
posted batteries which could have sunk any but regular war 
steamers which attempted to escape to sea, and, after that, it 
would be a mere question of patriotism whether Northerners 
would sacrifice their wealth, as Rotopschin did his own and that 
of his peers and fellow citizens in Moscow, to prevent its benefit- 
ting the enemy, and thus checkmate the victorious invader; or 
whether they would yield it in the hope of attaining a larger in- 
fluence in the conqueror's train and, by even baser than Southern 
adulation, thus rise in his estimation over his original followers. 

Alexander sacrificed those Avho assisted him to conquer, and 
without whom he could not have become so great, because they 
resented and resisted their being supplanted by his deposition of 
them in favor of the elevation of the supple Persians and farther East- 
erns; considering that such favorites were unworthy of an influence 
even equal, much less superior, to their own. Why? Because 
men like Parmenio and Clitus were of stern stuff", unsuitable to 
"a republican court" whereas such flatterers as Callisthenes of 
Olynthus were fit for any court. The former died loyal, and 
the latter naturally degenerated into conspirators, just as the 
Copperheads at the North were more ultra and baser in their 
views than the Southerners proper, out-Heroding Herod, and 
meaner than the worst Secession elements. 

Sumvia, Lee was neither a great man nor a great leader of 
men, as such terms must be applied to George H. Thomas, to 
whom are most applicable the rmging lines of Browning: 



20 



' Thither our path lies — wind we up the heights — 

Wait ye tlie warning ? 
Our low life was the level's and the night's; 

He's for the moniitig I 
Step to a tune, square shoulders, erect the head, 

'Ware the beholders ! 
This is our MASTER, famous, calm aui/ daul, 

Borne on our shoulders. 
Here's the top peak / * * 

Bury this man there/ 
Lofty designs must close in like effects ; 

Loftily lying, 
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, 

Living and dying !" 



IVOTES. 

(Note i, page 2.) To demonstrate the almost incalculable value 
of a base on the sea, when the Continental Dominion of Denmark 
was completely overrun by Tilly and Wallenstein, the Danish navy 
was still so much a source of trouble to the Imperialists as to exert a 
most favorable influence upon the Peace of Lubeck, 7th June, 1629. 
Again, the defence of Stralsund, which broke the back of Wallen- 
stein's hitherto invincibility and cost him twelve thousand of his 
best troops, was only rendered possible by the fact that the town 
was always open to reinforcements and supplies by the Baltic. 
For nearly a century, Sweden fought almost a life and death 
struggle to keep the Russians from getting jjossession of any jvart 
of the coast of the Baltic, being well aware that the moment that 
the Czar had ports on that, the East Sea, Sweden itself was no longer 
secure. It was the base of the sea that made England a nest of 
hornets against Spain under Elizabeth and a deadly weapon against 
Napoleon. The British ships enabled the 10,000 to 15,000 Spaniards 
of the Manjuis de la Romana to escape from the clutches of the 
tyrant in Denmark, i7lh-2oth August, 1808, at Nyborg and Sven- 
borg, to embark on the British fleet and return to assist in freeing 
their Fatherland, in fact checked, crushed the arch-traitor to liberty, 
the false Frenchman, typical Corsican, and finally, over the sea 
bore him to where he died the victim, not of his cai)tivity, but of 
his own real littleness which cramped and burned him out on the 
far distant isle in mid-ocean. 

(NoTK 2, page 4.) " History of the Civil Wars in Germany," 
1630-35, fromthe Manuscript Memoirs of a Shropshire Gentleman, 



21 

page 70. "And pray what news had you at Vienna} " asked Gus- 
tavLis Adolphus, * * * what is the common opinion there [at 
Vienna] about these aftairs ? " " The common people are terrified 
to the last degree," replied the English Volunteer, and when your 
Majesty took Frankfort upon Oder [April, 1631], if your army had 
marched but 20 miles into Silesia, half the people would have run 
out of Vienna, and I left them fortifying it." How much more 
true thiiiof the feeling in Vienna after Leipsic and the Lech ? Car- 
dinal Passman, on receiving the news of the Passage of the Lech, 
exclaimed, ''■Factum est.'" (It is all over ! ) 

The great German Jomini or Tactician, H. D. von Bulow, 
declared that the Passage of the Lech displayed the highest tactical 
ability on the part of the Swedes ; but the subsequent utilization 
thereof was not strictly strategical. General Horn was correct. 
He wanted Gustavus to march against Wallenstein in Bohemia, 
clear away that, the only obstacle, an army newly drawn together, 
and march on Vienna. 

(Note 3, page 4.) " I would have far preferred," said Oxen- 
stiern, "to have paid homage to your Majesty within the walls ot 
Vienna in the heart of the Austrian Monarchy, than here [in 
Frankfurt] on the banks of the Main, so far distant from the real 
objective (Ziele) of the War." — " Swedischer Plutarch" (Oxen- 
stjerna), by J. F. von Lundblad, Stralsund 1831, page 66. "Gus- 
tav Adolf der Grcsse," by von Rango, Leipsic, 1824, page 334. 
"Gustav n. Adolf: in Germany," by von Bulow, Vol. H, page 32. 
"Minutes of the Council in 1650," Palmstr. Mss., t. 190. Geijer, 
271 (I). Putnam's "Gindely," IL, 143. 

(Note. " Lech, Bridging, &c.," page 5.) 

The following account of the Bridging of the Lech, in 1632, by 
Gustavus Adolphus, was discovered in a rare book entitled, "The 
History of the Civil Wars in Germany from the year 1630-1635. 
Written by a Shroj^sliire Gentleman. Newark: Printed by James 
Tomlinson for the Publisher in 1782." In this book was pasted the 
following manuscript note : 

" E. Staveley, the Editor, informed me that he was once a sub- 
stantial farmer and dealt a little in the corn trade, but through 
losses, &:c., had failed; that the Mss. from which this was printed 
was found among the refuse of the library of Ld (Lord) Abingdon 
at Naith when that estate was sold about the year 1762 and given 
to him. the Editor, by Collingwood, the Steward. 2-97. 17-10I. 
J. L. (S?) Freeman." 

This book must have belonged to the library of my grandfather, 
Hon. John Watts, Junior, and come to him from Lord Abingdon, 
"with whom he was connected and with whom my greatgrandfather, 
Hon. John Watts, Senior, Member of the King's Council, N. Y., 



was in constant correspondence at the breaking out of the Ameri- 
can Revohition. The letters of my great grandfather, Hon. John 
Watts, Senior, to Lord Abingdon, picked up by accident in Lon- 
don, were considered so valuable by the Massachusetts Historical 
Society that they were published in their Vol. X., Fourth Series, 
1871. 

The author of the original manuscript was an Englishman, who 
first took service with the Great King as a simple Volunteer, and 
finally rose to command a regiment under him. He afterwards 
distinguished himself in the Army of Charles L, during the Great 
English Rebellion, 1650. 

•' I shall be the longer in relating this account of the Lech, be- 
ing esteemed in those days as great an action as any battle or 
siege of that age, and particularly famous for the disaster of the 
gallant old General Tilly; and for that I can be more particular 
ill it than other accounts, having been an eye-witness to every 
jtart. 

" The King being truly informed of the dispositions of the Ba- 
varian army, was once of the mind to have left the banks of the 
Lech, have repassed the Danube, and so sitting down before Ingol- 
stat, the Duke's capital city, by the taking that strong town to 
have made his entrance into Bavaria, and the conquest of such 
a fortress, one entire action ; but the strength of the place and the 
difficulty of maintaining his leaguer in an enemy's country, while 
Tilly was so strong in the field, diverted him from that design, he 
therefore concluded that Tilly was first to be beaten out of the 
country, and then the siege of Lngolstat would be the easier. 

" Whereu})on, the King resolved to go and view the situation 
of the enemy; his Majesty went out the 2nd oi April with a strong 
party of horse, which I had the honor to command; we marched 
as near as we could to the banks of the river, not to be too much 
exposed to the enemy's cannon, and having gained a little height, 
where the whole course of the river might be seen, the King halted, 
and commanded to draw up. His Majesty alighted, and calling 
me to him, examined every reach and turning of the river by his 
ffieldj glass, but finding it run a long and almost a straight course, 
lie could find no i)lace that he liked, but at last turning himself 
north, and looking down the stream, he found the river fetching a 
long reach, doubles short upon itself, making a round and very 
narrow point, "There's a i)oint will do our business (said the 
King), and if the ground be good I will pass there, let Tilly do his 
worst." 

" He immediately ordered a small party of horse to view the 
ground, and to bring him word particularly how high the bank 
was on each side and at the point; and he shall have 50 dollars, 



23 

says the King, that will bring me word how deep the water is, I 
asked his Majesty leave i ■> let me go, which he would by no means 
allow; but as the party were drawing out, a sergeant of dragoons 
told the King, if he pleased to let him go disguised as a boor, he 
would bring him an account of everything he desired. The King 
liked the motion very well, and the fellow being well acquainted 
with the country, puts on a ploughman's habit, and went away 
immediately with a long poll [pole] upon his shoulder ; the horse 
lay all this while in the woods, and the King stood undiscerned 
by the enemy on the little hill aforesaid. The dragoon with his 
long poll comes down boldly to the bank of the river, and calling 
to the centinels which Tilly had placed on the other bank, talked 
with them, asked if they could not help him over the river, and 
pretended he wanted to come to them ; at last, being come to the 
point where, as I said, the river makes a short turn, he stands 
parleying with them a great while, and sometimes pretended to 
wade over, he puts his long poll into the water, then finding it 
pretty shallow, pulls off his hose [trowsers] and goes in, still thrust- 
ing his poll in before him, till being got up to the middle, he 
could reach beyond him, where it was too deep, and so shaking 
his head, comes back again. The soldiers on the other side laugh- 
ing at him, asked him if he could swim. He said no. Why, you 
fool you, says one of the centinels, the channel of the rivet is 
twenty feet deep. How do you know that, says the dragoon. Why 
our engineer, says he, measured it yesterday. This was Avhat he 
wanted, but not yet fully satisfied ; aye, but, says he, may be it 
may not be very broad, and if one of you would wade in to meet 
me till I could reach you with my poll, I would give him half a 
ducat to pull me over. The innocent way of his discourse so de- 
luded the soldiers that one of them immediately strips and goes in 
up to the shoulders, and our dragoon goes in on this side to meet 
him; but the stream took the other soldier away, and he being a 
good swimmer, came over to this side. The dragoon was then in 
a great deal of pain for fear of being discovered, and was once 
going to kill the fellow, and make off; but at last resolved to carry 
on the humor, and having entertained the man with a tale of a 
tub, about the Swedes stealing his oats, the fellow being cold 
wanted to be gone, and he as willing to be rid of him, pretended 
to be very sorry he could not get over the river, and so makes 
off. " By this, however, he learned both the depth and breadth 
of the channel, the bottom and nature of both shores, and every- 
thing the King wanted to know; we could see him from the hill 
by our glasses very plain, and could see the soldier naked with 
him : he is a fool, says the King, he does not kill the fellow and 
run off; but when the dragoon told his tale, the King was ex- 



24 

trenicly well satisfied with him, gave him loo ilollais ami made 
him a (luarter-master to a troop of cuirassiers. 

"The King having farther examined tiie dragoon, he gave him 
a very distinct account of the ground on this side, which he found 
to be higher than the enemy's by lo or 12 feet, and a hard gravel. 
Hereupon the King resolved to pass there, and in order to it 
gives, himself, particular directions for such a bridge as I believe 
never army passed a river on before or since. 

" His bridge was only loose i)lanks laid upon large tressels in 
the same homely manner I have seen bricklayers raise a low scaf- 
fold to build a brick wall; the tressels were made higiier than one 
another to answer to the river as it becomes deeper or shallower, 
and was all framed and fitted before any appearance was made of 
attempting to pass. — When all were ready the King brings his 
army down to the bank of the river, and plants his cannon as the 
enemy had done, some here and some there, to amuse them. 

"At night, April \\\\, the King commanded about 2000 men 
to march to the point, and to throw up a trench on either side, 
and quite round it with a battery of six pieces of cannon at each 
end, beside three small mounts, one at the point and one at each 
side, which had each two pieces upon them. This work was begun 
so briskly, and so well carried on, the King firing all night from 
the other parts of the river, that by daylight all the batteries at 
the new work were mounted, the trench lined with 2000 mus(|ue- 
teers, and all the utensils [materials] of the bridge lay ready to be 
put together. 

" Now the Imperialists discovered the design, but it was too 
late to hinder it, the musqueteers in the great trench, and the five 
new batteries, made such continual fire that the other bank, which, 
as before, lay 12 feet below them, was too hot for the Imperialists, 
whereupon Tilly, to be provided for the King at his coming over, 
falls to work in a wood right against the point, and raises a great 
battery for 20 pieces of cannon, with a breast-work, or line, as near 
the river as he could, to cover his men, thinking that when the 
King had built his bridge he might easily beat it down with his 
cannon. 

" But the King had doubly ])revented him, first by laying his 
bridge so low that none of Tillf'-, shot could hurt it; for the briih^^e 
lay not above half a foot above the water's surface, by which means 
the King, who in that showed himself an excellent engineer, had 
secured it from any batteries being made within the land, and the 
angle of the bank secured it from the remoter batteries, on the 
other side, and the continual fire of the cannon and small shot, 
beat the Imperialists from their station just against it, they having 
no works to cover them. 



25 

"And in the second place, to secure his passage, he sent over 
about 200 men, and after that 200 more, who had orders to cast 
up a large ravelin on the other bank, just where he designed to 
land his bridge; this was done with such expedition too, that it 
was finished before night, and in a condition to receive all the shot 
of Tilly s great battery, and effectually covered his bridge. While 
this was doing the King on his side lays over his bridge. Both 
sides wrought hard all day and all night, as if the spade, not the 
sword, had been to decide the controversy, and that he had got 
the victory whose trenches and batteries were first ready ; in the 
mean time the cannon and musquet bullets flew like hail, and made 
the service so hot, that both sides had enough to do to make their 
men stand to their work; the King in the hottest of it, animated 
his men by his presence, and Tilly, to give him his due, did the 
same ; for the execution was so great and so many officers killed. 
General Attringer [Aldringer] wounded, and two sergeant-majors 
killed, that at last Tilly himself was obliged to be exposed and to 
come up to the very face of our line to encourage liis men, and 
give his necessary orders. 

"And here about i o'clock, much about the time that the 
King's bridge and works were finished, and just as they said he 
had ordered to fall on upon our ravelin with 3000 foot, was the 
brave old Tilly slain with a musquet bullet in the thigh [kneej ; he 
was carried off" to Ingolstat, and lived some days after, but died of 
the wound the same day that the King had his horse shot under 
him at the siege of that town. 

" We made no question of passing the river here, having 
brought everything so forward, and with such extraordinary suc- 
cess, but we should have found it a very hot piece of work if Tilly 
had hved one day more; and if I may give my opinion of it, hav- 
ing seen Tilly's battery and breast-work, in the face of which we 
must have passed the river, I must say that whenever we had 
marched, if Tilly had fallen in with his horse and foot, placed in 
that trench, the whole army would have passed as much in danger 
as in the face of a strong town in the storming a counterscarp. 
The King himself, when he saw with what judgment lilly had 
prepared his works, and what danger he must have run, would 
often say, that day's success was every way equal to the victory 
of Leipsick. 

'■'■Tilly being hurt and carried off, as if the soul of the army had 
been lost, they begun to draw off; the Duke oi Bavaria took horse 
and rode away as if he had fled out of battle for life." (Pages 
110-117.) 

Since the publication of my Collection of Notes on " Bridging 
and Fording," constituting an Appendix to the Pamphlet edited by 



2fi 

me, "Sailors' Creek to Appomattox Court House," being "War 
Memoraiuhi" by General H. Edwin Tremain, and my " La 
Royale," Part VIII., treating of the Surrender at Ai)pomattox Court 
House, the following letter, dated Weatliersfield, Vermont, 27th 
June, 1886, has been received from Col. Leavitt Hunt, who was 
senior Aid-de-Camp to General Heintzleman, first Commandant 
of the Third Corps. 

" When I was in the Federal (Swiss) Military School or West 
Point Academy "■ Foribilduih^schnlf" at Thun of which I am or was 
the only foreign graduate (except I.ouis Napoleon), I had the ex- 
perience of throwinga ponton bridge over 150 |feet] long (and on 
which all arms [infantry, cavalry and artillery] tra\ersed) in tweuty- 
iwo niiniitfs, the current [of the Aare] seven miles an hour. The 
interesting point was that it was the fastest current on which it is 
safe to throw such bridge, so they taught. 

" Your tradition of experience in throwing a bridge of wagons 
over the Mohawk [mentioned among J. W. de P.'s anecdotes of 
" Bridging; and Fording," ])age xl.], as attested by ]>ewis N. 
Morris, is interesting, because he lived from about 1807 five (25 ?) 
miles below us on the Connecticut, on a fine estate, and had for his 
third wife my aunt, eldest daughter of my grandfather, Governor 
Hunt, of Vermont. She died about twenty years ago." 

(Note 4, page 5.) "Be not slow to act on an emergency," says 
Ecclesiasticus (x. 26) and if ever a batde was won and lost in 
obedience to, or violation of, this principle, Chancellorsville was. 
Again and again the Rebels exposed their unprotected flanks to 
mortal blows and none were delivered. Webb, among others, 
saw opportunities, as Stuart advanced against Sickles and the 
Third Corps at Hazel Grove, begged to be permitted to strike, 
and was forbidden and withheld. 

Asumming-upof the battle of Chancellorsville, as a military 
criticism, may be of interest at this date, as Chancellorsville and 
Gettysburg are inseparably connected; the latter was the result of 
the first. Hooker's plan for this battle was perfect ; equal to any 
simple or single stroke ever conceived by any of the greatest 
captains. It was in the exact style of the most consummate gene- 
rals; bold, brilliant and bewildering to Lee, The practical-stra- 
tegy which left Sedgwick in front of Fredericksburg, to amuse Lee 
and chain his attention, coupled with the demonstrations of the 
First and Third Corps, while the rest of the Army of the Potomac 
were carried over the Rappahannock and Rapidan, and ])lanted 
across the lines of communication and supply of the Army of 
Northern Virginia, were unsurpassed in merit, both of conception 
and execution. The quiet abstraction of the Third Corps from the 
force in front of Lee, and its transferral to swell the mass in his 



27 

rear and make the event more certain, was a mansuvre considered 
worthy of citation. 

On the morning of Friday, the first of May, Hooker held Lee, 
as it were, in the hollow of his hand. All he had to do was to 
close his fingers and compress the Rebel leader's throat, and his 
orders of that morning read as though he comprehended what had 
to be done and as if he was about to do the thing that was right, 
viz. : to get his army out of the woods (the Wilderness) into the 
clearings ; to advance through the comparatively open country, 
swinging forward his right to co-operate with Sedgwick in closing 
the Bowling Green road ; to close in upon Lee, as the Prussians 
narrowed the circle of their hunt until they shut Bazaine up in 
Metz; until they crippled and took McMahon in Sedan. Up to 
this point all was lovely, that is up to 2. p. m., Friday, May ist. 

Had Hooker gone ahead, he had troops enough to meet Lee, 
the more particularly as the Third Corps was rapidly coming up 
in reserve. 

A simultaneous attack by Hooker from the west, Sedgwick 
from the east, Hooker's right closing in and giving the hand to 
Sedgwick's left, thus completing the circuit on the south, while the 
Rappahannock precluded escape to the north. Such a vigorous 
nip would have made Chancellorsville another Ulm, or Sedan, in 
the open field. 

Hooker had 48,000 men, besides the Third Corps 18,000, 
equal to 66,000; Lee 49,000 or 50,000 facing West; Sedgwick 
25,000 to 30,000, besides the First Corps, not yet withdrawn, 
17,000, equal to 42,000 to 47,000, to^crush Early with 9,000 to 
10,000 facing East. 

The fearful mistake of the recall of the advance or attack of 
Friday noon on Hooker's side, is chargeable to the Union com- 
mander. This is his own fault and cannot be shifted in whole or 
part to any other shoulders. It was an awful military error. Per- 
haps — taking into consideration circumstances, possibilities, pro- 
babilities — viewed, weighed and judged from a strictly military 
standpoint, it was the greatest mistake of the war. Still it may be 
entirely excused or satisfactorily explained on other than military 
grounds, for no one, except those within the Ring, can know what 
reasons, moral influences, actuated Hooker — led to this, for him, 
ruinous reversal of the programme. 

The dispositions of Friday p. m. for defensive battle, if any- 
thing could excuse the passage from an exhilarating offensive to a 
depressing defensive, were well enough. The whole paralysis of 
Saturday, both as regards Sedgwick and Hooker, are inexplicable 
and inexcusable, supposing Hooker to have been himself, which 
the writer has always doubted; not (^rw-stimulated — no, no, no; 
but wrt';/////^'' stimulant.s — tired out or Avorn down. 



2H 

Jackson's Hank march with 30,000 veterans and his attack on 
the Union right on Saturday evening were magnificent, but not 
more magnificent than Sickles' and Pleasonton's stoppage of 
his onward; the latter with twenty-two guns and 1,000 troopers. 

Lee's separation of his army should have inevitably insured 
his defeat, just as the dispositions of the French army, in 1870, 
under McMahon and Frossard, right and left, without a centre, 
scarcely feeling to each other, occasioned its utter overthrow, dis- 
solution and dispersion, and was the dawn of the noon at Sedan. 

Lee's dislocation of his forces on Saturday could have had but 
one result — disastrous defeat — had there been a Gustavus, a Tors- 
tenson, a Traun, a Frederic, a Massena, a Dessaix, a Thomas, or 
a von Moltke at the head of the Union army. 

The nocturn'al operations of the Third Corjis on Saturday night 
2d-3d May, were, /// /<'//6', as daring and effective as the preceding 
action of Jackson on a grander scale. 

The order to abandon Hazel Grove on Sunday morning, 
y\ May, was on a par with many other of the military madnesses 
of the campaign ; but necessary, if its maintenance was not to be, 
or could not be, ade(]uately sui)[)orted. The latter was not the 
case. If it was held, Lee was split in two. His left, assaulting 
Hazel Grove and Chacellorsville, was exposed to a crushing flank 
attack from Reynolds with the First Corps, 17,000 strong, fresh 
and ready. Reynolds here laid himself Oj^en to a similar rebuke 
that Lord Raglan launched at Lord Lucan after his prodigal expend- 
diture of the British cavalry at Balaklava. I>ee's right — 20,000 — 
held by a thin skirmish line under Miles, in front, was open to an 
annihilating blow in rear from Sedgwick, had the latter obeyed 
orders, shown any head or any alacrity. At 7, a. m., Sunday, 
May 3d, it was in the power of the Army of the Potomac to have 
dissolved the Army of Northern Virginia. Say Lee had still, all 
told, 50,000. Of these, 30,000 under Stuart, minus losses (A. 
H. G. says 27.000), were attacking Sickles' 18,000 and Slocum 
and French from the East, say together 30,000; 20,000 under his 
(Lee's) own supervision; Slocum and Hancock, say 15,000, from 
the East; while 10,000 were confronting, not as yet fighting, 
Sedgwick. On the right flank of Stuart, Reynolds could have 
thrown 17,000, equal in their fire and freshness to 25,000 fasting, 
fought-out troops. Thus Jackson's successor w^ould have been 
compressed between forces eleven to six, equal, under the circum- 
stances, to two (Union) to his one (Rebel). Meanwhile Lee's 
10,000 would have been faced by Slocum and Hancock, say 
13,000, and /frt//^r// by Meade, 12,000 fresh and good troop.s — 
overwhelming odds, over two to one. Sedgwick had, at first, 
nearly three to Early's one. 



29 



Saturday, .d May. Tke '""^ ':''' ''^''^^y.f^^l^ Y.L 
in a prunary ^i^^^^l^'^-^'^Zt^^ No successor 

Sisiilil 

" *Mian MKlependence faikd of s.ccessat Santa Lucia 6th May 

:f^;::^"fef:a;:s[;ffoo;.o(8thApt.^ 



30 

noon ; stupefied almost all Monday, Sedgwick fighting one to one 
when he might have had two to one, had he kept Gibbon in hand 
and been reinforced by Banks' Ford. The latter movement would 
have taken the Rebel line at any time on Monday morning in 
flank and rolled it up Rosbach style, and even Missionary Ridge 
style, when Hooker fell on Bragg's right flank. 

Curious spectacle — Hooker quiescent in \\\v, pan-coupce; Lee 
watching him in his crescent, parallel to its flattened or excised 
triangle ; McLaws and Mahone six miles from Hooker, confront- 
ing two sides of Sedgwick's U or hollow square, of which the Raj)- 
l)ahannock constituted the fourth side or base ; Early, the third 
side, paying no attention to Gibbon, who, finally, had put the 
river between him and the fight, and who, if he had been a little 
further back and higher up, and had the ground favored, might 
have looked on a grand gladiatorial encounter with firearms — ^just 
as Vendome observed of a large portion of the French army at 
Oudenarde and Hooker of 30,000 of the Union army at Williams- 
burg — whereas he ought to have fallen on Early's rear in co- 
operation with Sedgwick. 

Gibbon might, with justice, say he had our camps and stores to 
protect. Often the temptation of ])lundering a camp has given a 
victory to the party who lost their impedi/iieuia, all their traps. 
Janikau, Sohr, Shiloh, Cedar Creek, are four among many examples 
of what such conveying of a neighbor's goods often costs an ap- 
parently successful army. 

Tuesday, May 5, Hooker or Couch, or Couch-Meade still quiet. 
Sedgwick back across the river. Had Sedgwick only held on, 
Hooker might have recrossed to the North bank at United States 
Ford, marched down the left bank, crossed again to the South 
side at Banks' Ford, and fought a new battle on the plateau mid- 
way Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, in a comparatively open 
country. 

Wednesday, May 6th, the Army of the Potomac home across 
tbe Rappahannock. 

Result — a moral victory to the Rebels, worth, at this time, a 
real one; 36,000 men killed, wounded and prisoners, the lo.ss 
about equally divided. Union gain, the killing of Stonewall Jack- 
son and the flower of the Rebel infantry. The nation's loss, the 
apparent defeat and red-tape victory, the restoration of the credit 
of the Commander-in-Chief (who was so severely accused by 
Burnside and was individually hostile to Hooker), and his return 
to pristine power. 

Fortunately for the loyal party, the same red-tape and Ring 
which kept down merit and precluded success at the North, was 
equally in the ascendant at the South. Witness the prompt pro- 



31 

motion of such men as Bragg and Pemberton — the tardy justice 
to their antipodes, the remarkable Gordon and the second Stone- 
wall Jackson, Mahone. 

(Note to line 4 from bottom of page 5. Sentence ending 
"single cast of the dice.") 

[" Napoleon was going through the painful experience of a 
gambler who, after a long run of luck, has calculated every chance 
and staked handfuls of gold — and then finds himself beaten after 
all, just because he has played too elaborately." — Tolstoi's "War 
and Peace," Series III., I., 81.] 

(Note A. Page 6.) The superiority of old troops, acclimated 
to suffering and battle, as compared with the best of new troops, 
can scarcely be sufficiently estimated. Had Tilly not allowed him- 
self to be forced to accept the battle of Leipsic, in 1631, by the 
taunts and headstrong valor or "fiery nature" of Pappenheim, 
and had he waited for the arrival of the veterans whom Aldringer 
and Tiefenbach were leading back to his assistance, from the con- 
quest and sack of Mantua — the hand on the clock of human pro- 
gress and religious freedom would have been arrested then and 
there. Never, perhaps, was a violation of the rule to concentrate 
forces for an impending battle more suddenly punished. Austria 
lost the whole gain of thirteen years by sending off a veteran army 
on a good as foreign expedition wherein success could have no in- 
fluence on the terrible conflict at home. Napoleon modernized 
pithy maxims as old as war, which is, perhaps, the natural state of 
man, and one of these was simply this : "When a battle is impend- 
ing, scrape together every accessible man." 

Had the forces sent to plunder Mantua been kept in Germany, 
the campaigns of Gustavus, culminating at Leipsic, would have 
been utterly impossible. Divided forces and counsels, armies 
frittered away, and perhaps 200,000 troops scattered over vast ex- 
tents of territory to find subsistence, alone made it possible for the 
Swedish 30,000 to penetrate into and subjugate the country. 
Never, except in the Thirty Years' War, in many respects a per- 
fect parallel to the " Slaveholders' Rebellion," was there in any con- 
flict of war such a waste of strength as was again and again displayed 
by the Imperial States in Europe and by the North in America, and 
at no time so manifestly as when Halleck drove Hooker to resign 
by refusing him the control of every man who could be assembled 
to fall with crushing force upon Lee. When the troops refused to 
Hooker were accorded to Meade, it was either too late or Meade 
could not handle them or what he had. 

" Yet war was his true vocation. If ever any one was born for 
war, Charles Napier was the man. He studied its theory from 
boyhood. He followed Alexander from the Granicus to the Indus, 



82 

and critically analyzed the structure of his campaigns. He had 
meditated |)rofoundly upon the large principles and strategic laws 
of war before he was required to put them in practice. The 
maxims which he evolved in the study were the principles which 
he afterwards illustrated in the field. And in this, as in everything 
else — but in this pre-emitiently — he went at once, with direct de- 
cisive insight, to the root of the matter. To the professional 
student his distjuisitions on strategy must prove invaluable; even 
to the general reader — the laws which regulate a military campaign 
being not remotely derived from those which rule the still larger 
campaign of life — they are full of interest ! 'A commander should 

CONCENTRATE HIS OWN FORCES, DIVIDE HIS ENEMIES, AND NEVER 
THINK HIMSELF STRONG ENt)UGH WHEN HE CAN BE STRONGER. 

Yet he should remember that additional numbers do not always 
give strength. Always attack if you cannot avoid an action. If 
your enemy is strongest, fall on his weakest points, and avoid his 
strongones. [Skoboleff's maxim.] If you are more powerful, fasten 
on his vitals, and destroy him. If he is strong, provoke him to separate; 
if he is weak, drive him into a corner/ ' These maxims were penned 
many years before he went to the East ; his Scindian campaign 
was their application." — " Essays on History and Biography," by 
John Skilton, L L.D. (Edin.), Advocate. Edinburg and London, 
1883. Page 278. 

["But force is the product of the mass multiplied by the velo- 
city. And in war the force of the troops is also the product of the 
mass, but the multiplier is an unknown quantity." — Tolstoi's " War 
and Peace," Series 111., II., 136.J 

["Those who are most eager to fight will always be in the best 
condition for a struggle. The Spirit of the troops is the multiplier 
which, taking the mass as the multiplicand, will give the strength 
as a product. The real problem for the Science of War is to ascer- 
tain and formulate its value, and it will never be able to do so, 
until it ceases to substitute for this unknown quantity such factors 
as the commander's plan or the accoutrements of the soldier; then 
only, by expressing certain historical facts by equations and com- 
paring their relative value, can we hope to ascertain that of this 
unknown x." — Tolstoi's "War and Peace," series III., II., 137.] 

["It would appear that, having rejected the belief of older 
historians in the submission of People's to the Divine Will, and in 
])redestined objects — towards the fulfilment of which Mankind is 
unconsciously borne — modern history ought surely to study and 
investigate, not so much the fact and manifestation of Power, as 
tlie reasons which dominate its existence." — Tolstoi's " War and 
Peace," Series III., II., 325.] 



33 

(Note 5, page 8.) [" If Early [9th-10th July, 1864,] had been but one 
day earlier he might have entered the Capital before the arrival of the 
reinforcements I [Grant] had sent. Whether the delay caused by the battle 
amounted to a day or not, General Wallace contributed on this occasion 
by the defeat of the troops under him a greater benefit to a cause than 
often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force t0| render by 
means of a victory." — Grant's "Personal Memoirs," 11., 306.] 

(Note 6, page 10.) [" It is true [spring of 1864] the Confederates had, 
so far, held their Capital, and they claimed this to be their sole object. 
But previously they had boldly proclaimed their intention to capture 
Philadelphia, NewYorkand the national Capital, and had made several 
attempts to do so."— Grant's " Personal Memoirs," II., 177-178.] 

In regard to Lee's objective being PldJadelplda, see William Svi^inton's 
"Army of the Potomac," page 335, text and note* ; likewise his " Twelve 
Decisive Battles of the War," page 321. Examine in connection with 
" On to Philadelphia," Colonel Fletcher, B. A., " History of the American 
War," II. 403 ; Professor Draper's " Civil War in America," III. 125 ; 
Lossing's "Civil War in America," III., 57 ; Pollard's (Bebel) " Third Year 
of the War," 33 ; Grant's " Personal Memoirs," II. 177, 178 ; Count of Paris, 
"Civil War in America." 506-533, &c. It remains to be seen what the 
publication of the Official Records of the Rebellion is going to reveal. 

^ Bridging. — The more often and the more closely the critical military 
mind dwells upon the losses of time and the waste of opportunities be- 
tween the 2d and 9th of April, and during the flight of Lee and pursuit 
of Grant, but most particularly at Farmville, throughout pretty much 
the whole of 7th of April, 1865 — near which town the war might, should, 
could and would have been ended in a blaze of glory, with chief credit to 
Humphreys and his combined Second and Third Corps and to the better 
satisfaction of the troops and to the nation — the more vividly occurs to 
memory the remark of the French marshal, the Duke of Berwick, after a 
similar failure to profit by, and rejection of, fortunes' offer with both hands 
full of her best favors. 

"The suspension of operations leads inevitably to a conviction as 
replete with regret as the criticism, so eminently just, so dignified and so 
temperate, pronounced by Field Marshal the Duke of Berwick, upon the 
failure, on the part of the French, to profit by their opportunities and at- 
tack the Allies at the Abbey de Pure, or Pare, near Louvain, on (seventh) 
June, 1693. William III. had between fifty and sixty thousand men — 
only fifty thousand according to some accounts ; the French about one 
hundred and twenty thousand. 

" Thereupon Berwick, lamenting the remembrance of such chances 
absolutely thrown awa3% remarked : "The King's retreat * * * (was) 
incomprehensible. As there could have been no good reasons for it, and 
never having been able to learn any [to justify it], neither from the mi- 
nisters [of war] (nor from those cognizant of such affairs), nor from the 
generals, one needs must conclude, that God did not will tlie execution of 
these beautiful plans." 

The more frequently the parallel of circumstance are considered the 
more inexplicable Grant's blindness or inertion appears to be. Grant had 
no genius and his mind did not work quickl3^ His successes were all 
won by pouring out blood like w^ater. Nothing was denied to him and 
he used everything without mei-cy. With what ease the Appomattox 
could have been bridged at once in various ways, Humphreys reinforced 
and Lee destroyed on that spring afternoon, is susceptible of clear proof. 
As the abutments of the railroad and the wagon road bridge at Farm- 
ville were intact, bridges on the cantilever principle (see illustration) 
were easiest and simplest. There was a superfluity of foi-ce, men and 
teams, and an exuberance of material ; tall trees near by to fell for the 
principal beams, and a town at hand, to demolish, for smaller timber and 
lumber. There was the enemy, exhausted and depleted, within three 
miles, held all that afternoon and evening by the combined Second and 
Third Corps, about one-third as strong, and all this within hearing, almost 
within sight of a huge army indifferent to the occasion, leaving Hum- 
phreys "to take care of himself." Meanwhile all that interposed between 
glory and inertion was a stream, not deep nor rapid, about one hundred 
feet wide, which brains and will could have bridged strongly and suffi- 
ciently in two hours. 

" "This [cantilever] bridge at Wangtu is a fine specimen of the Hima- 
layan construction, wherever a solid roadway is required. It is built 
entirely on the principle of leverage. Several large trees are felled on each 
side of the river, and their trunks are laid on either shore, with the nar- 
rower ends [apices] projecting over the river, and heavy stones laid over 



34 



the thick ends [butts] to increase tlieir counterweight. (Voss-bars of wood 
are then laid over tlie projecting ends. Thus the first layer is complete. 
The process is repeated again and again, each layer of trees projecting 
some feet beyond the la.*;t,lill the two sets of timber almost meet in mid- 
air, and one more layer crowns both. Then planks, laid crosswise from the 
roadway. The base of the timbers on eitli^pde is imliedded in solid 
masonry. Strong railings guard a^iinst accmeiits, and an excellent sub- 
stantial bridge is thus formed. The timber generally used is ilemlar 
[Himalayan Vedar\ which seems almost imperishable, proof alike against 
heat and wet, and all other influences tending to decay. The same prin- 
ciple of bridge-making, but in roug/i-and-readi/ xlylc, w to be S(en on a unidll 
scale on inaug little .st reams, suchbridges being ocraxionally ra})idli/ made just 
when required! Rough logs are laid on either bank, weighted by stones. 
On these arc laid others, tied together with coarse rojx's of goat'shair 
[prolonges would answer at a pinch] and, of course, overlapping the first 
layer, then a final layer unites both. Still narrtncer torrents are bridged by 
aeouplenf tall trees, felh'd sous tofallacross the stream side by side; on these 
are laid flat slabs of stone, and the bridge is complete." — "In the Hima- 
layas and on the Indian Plains." Bv C. F. Gordon Gumming. Page 3'Jl. 
London, 1884. N. Y. S. L. 





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"One of the greatest impediments to the progress of an army in all 
mountainous districts, is the cataracts, which frequently bound from the 
hills with an impetuosity that nothing can resist. * *" * The engrav- 
ing [above, of view near Wandepore (Wandipoor), 18 miles east by 
south of Tassisudon, capital of Bo\itan] will give some idea of the sort of 
bridges employed in the vast chains of the Himalaya and Caucasus, being 
taken in Boutan. The bridge represented in the print is thrown over a 
rapid stream in these hills [a branch from the north of the Brahmapootra], 
and is a very favorable si)('cimen of that description of architecture in 
this mountainous region. Its construction is somewhat singular. Several 
strong beams are imbedded in masonry, and supported by the rocks on 
the precipitous banks of the stream. They are sccurelj'^ fixed in the in- 
terstices of these natural receptacles, and clamped together by means of 
strong wooden wedges, inserted into mortises — for there the workmen 
employ no iron in any of their structures. A space of several inches is 
left between the beams, which increase in length from the buttress formed 
by the rocky sides of the channel, the longest on either side reaching to 
within about a fourth part of the span of the bridge. Planks upwards of 
two feet wide, are then placed on the uppermost and longest of the i)ro- 
jecting beams on each side of the stream ; upon these planks small trans- 
verse joists are laid, and other planks again placed over them, the whole 
forming a steady and substantial floor. These bridges may be passed 
with perfect safety, and are no doubt precisely the same as those em- 
ployed in the days' of Timour."' — Oriental Annual, for 1837. London. 

■r While these paces were passing through the press, the writer met 
his friend, Rear-Adniiral Clias. A. Baldwin. U. S. N.. lOth-llth August. 
188(5. at the United States Hotel, Saratoga Springs, N. Y. The admiral 
said that, while in command of the Vanclerbilt in pursuit of the "Pirate 
Semmes," he ran into James Town, St. Helena. Sir Charles Elliot, re- 



35 

cently appointed governor, had just arrived from London, having 
been dropped, a few days previous, by a passing stearner. ^ Sir 
Charles had been a great deal in America ; had been British Com- 
missioner to Texas before its annexation to the United States ; had 
been intimately acquainted with a number of our prominent private 
citizens and politicians; understood the feelings of the people and 
the workings of the government; had spent quite a long time in 
Washington, and knew all the country around, thoroughly, in 
which the armies were operating in the summer of 1863. In fact, 
he was completely posted and prepared to talk, and he brought 
out an extremely good map of Northern Virginia, Maryland and 
South-Eastern or'Southern Pennsylvania. He had, beside this, 
all the advantage of the latest British official information, up to the 
time he left London, only a few days previous, and knew that Lee 
had crossed the border into Pennsylvania with 90,000 to 100,000 
of the very best Rebel troops and a thoroughly appointed army. 
Sir Charles was satisfied that, if the Rebels were successful in the 
first coUision — could win the first battle, which must take place 
sooner or later — Philadelphia was their direct objective; that they 
must take it; that meanwhile they would ravage the country to 
their heart's content; that their purpose was not to destroy, but to 
levy enormous contributions. [A very able educated soldier had 
previously prophesied, as did Gen. Philip Kearny afterwards, in 
1862, that if they were successful in the field, Philadelphia would 
be the Rebel objective, and the former gentleman told the writer 
to go to Thurlow Weed from him, an old friend, and say that if 
the North was not more in earnest in providing adequate troops, 
"the Pelicans" [alluding to the symbol of Louisiana, the remote 
Southwest] " would be shaking their tails over New York from the 
heights of Weehawken." Sir Charies added that the effect of 
Lee's winning the first battle on Northern soil would throw Mary- 
land into the Rebel hands and give them a great additional force 
of men. He concluded by emphasizing that the great mistake of 
the United States government was in paralyzing so many good 
troops in guarding Harper's Ferry and Washington. The former, 
he observed, was altogether Halleck's fault, who had Harper's 
Ferry on the brain. [It was insisting upon leaving a whole strong 
division at Harper's Ferry and refusing to concede their control 
to Hooker that led to that general's resignation, although he had 
already traversed Lee's designs, and threw the Army of the Poto- 
mac into the hands of Meade, whose first order was " to have a 
grand review," and who, according to General Doubleday, wanted 
to assume a position at Pipe Creek, where Lee might have chosen 
to let it severely alone and have kept on depredating Pennsylvania 
after capturing Harrisburg.] 



36 



HOOKERS EFFECT ON GETTYSBURG. 

"San Francisco, Presidio of S. F.,Cal., June i8, 1886. 
"Major-General Joseph Hooker, U. S. Army, 

" Grand Hotel, San Francisco, Cal. 
" Dear General : 

" I received your note of the 1 7th inst. this morning, and I have 
directed copies of certain jjapers in my possession to be made for 
you, and I know no one more entitled to them than yourself, con- 
nected as they are with the battle of Gettysburg, up to the dates 
included in the orders of which you will be sent copies. 

"You remember that I was detached from the command of a 
line division of the Second Army Corps, which I had organized 
and fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, 
men of whom Sumner testified before the Committee on the Con- 
duct of the War, that ' the enemy had never seen their backs,' to 
take comma'nd of the troops on Maryland Heights, part the 
debris of Milroy's Manchester fiasco, and that you followed me 
there on the 27th June, 1863, and ordered the immediate evacua- 
tion of the place, and that the troops, numbering about 11,000 of all 
arms, should join the Army of the Potomac, then converging to- 
wards Emettsburg. Whilst at lunch, at 2 p. m., your order was 
countermanded by Halleck, and you left for Frederick, where you 
resigned the command. On the following day, an A. D. C. of 
General Meade's ordered me to evacuate the Heights, ordering 
such property as could be put in boats (canal) to be sent to 
Washington. Leaving General Elliott with 3,000 men to execute 
the last part of the order, I moved at once with the remaining 
8,000 men to Frederick, and immediately put myself e7i rapport 
with Meade, as the enclosed pai)ers testify. Stretching a line to- 
wards Baltimore, on one side of Frederick, and opening com- 
munications upon which the Army of the Potomac were dependent 
for supplies, I sent other troops to occupy South Mountain and 
other passes, and pushed the cavalry as far as the Potomac, who 
destroyed the pontoon bridge over which Lee's army had crossed, 
thus depressing the morale of the enemy, whilst our own was i)ro- 
portionately raised — lowered, as it appears in these papers, it had 
been for the first two or three days of the fight. 

"The order placing me in command of the Third Army Corps 
was given by General Meade, in consequence of my service during 
the batUe of Gettysburg with the Harpers Ferry troops, for de- 
manding whom you were obliged to throw up your command. 
It is a matter of history, that my ' cordon ' shut out Stewart's 
cavalry from taking any part in the contest, or in the least molest- 
ing the base of Meade's operations. The day previous to my 



37 

arrival, a train from Baltimore of two hundred wagons had been 
cut off. 

" I have no desire to obtrude my record, my services were given 
with all the zeal and ability I possessed, but as the war closed 
places became more valuable to politicians than the men who 
occupied them and those having most influence secured them. 

" To leave a fair reputation for my children will satisfy me, and 
long since I have ceased to expect more. 

" Very sincerely, [Signed.] Wm. H. French, 

"Brev't Maj.-Gen'l, U. S. A." 

" I certify the foregoing is a true copy of the original, now in 
my possession. "J. Hooker, 

" Maj.-Gen'l." 

" The following is a copy, if not the identical words, of the 
substance of my telegram to General Butterfield regarding the 
cavalry. 

" Point of Rocks, June 27th, 1863. 
" General Butterfield, 

" Frederick, Md. 
** Send the cavalry in the direction of Gettysburg and Emetts- 
burg to ascertain the whereabouts of the enemy, and to report 
to me. [Signed.] Maj.-Gen'l Hooker." 

"Dear Beale:— In overhauling some war papers I found some 
that may be of use to you in preparing your address (or which I 
think should be), the history of that battle, as I think you have, 
or can soon have all the data necessary for the purpose. Copies 
of my orders for the advance from Frederick, on three lines of the 
whole army, can be obtained by application to the Adjutant- 
General of the Army, and these orders were only departed from 
by the troops on the most easterly line. See Butterfield's tes- 
timony. Vol. L, page 419, series 65. Also, in the same volume, 
page 329 (near the bottom). General Meade's j-/V/^''«/rtr testimony : 
* that I gave him no information of my plans,' &:c., and, also, in 
the same volume, the report of committee, pages 53,54,55. Gene- 
ral Butterfield informs me that he delivered the above telegram to 
General Pleasanton verbally. I^^It seems, therefore, that General 
Meade only began to blunder the moment he passed from under 
the influence of my orders. I left him my plans, my orders, my 
staff and my army (except two aides-de-camp). ,^^1 

"Yours truly and sincerely, "J. Hooker, 

" Maj.-Gen'l," 



38 



SICKLES AT^JETTYSBURG. 

" If you had asked me as to my opinion of that battle [Gettys- 
burg] I would have answered decidedly in favor of Sickles, and 
would say that no man with a military eye that takes in the topo- 
graphy of the battlefield of Gettysburg but could see at once the 
necessity of Sickles occupying the /itgh Peach Orchard ground. 
Had he not done so, Lee would have planted his artillery there 
and have swept our army from the gradual sloping plain below 
from our left to our right flank, cutting us to pieces by a flank fire. 
I have never seen a better position to accomplish this, than in the 
lay of this land, and have been told that it was Lee's plan to do 
so, for he had looked at it. I have no question of doubt but Sickles 
by this 7nov€ saved to our army the day. 

" You know that my command was on the left-centre, at the 
Emettsburg road, and that the destruction of my nth New Jersey 
Regiment was from a flank fire ; the front fire from Barksdale's 
command was severe, but \.\\t fJank fire was terrible. I am sure 
that General Sickles will win this contest [discussion as to his ad- 
vance] as he did at Gett)sburg." 

Extract from a letter of Major-General Robert McAllister, of 
New Jersey, to General J. Watts de Peyster, dated 31st August, 
1886. 

*' General Sickles did not send misleading orders to his com- 
mander of the Second Division (General Humphreys), on the oc- 
casion of his night march to Gettysburg, July ist, at which time 
Humphreys nearly marched his division within the Confederate 
lines. The proof of my assertion is the published report of the 
Committee on the Conduct of the War, wherein General Hum- 
))hreys testifies 'that the error was his own' in not correctly con- 
struing General Sickles' order. This fact should settle that point 
for all time. If it is true that General Sickles 'did receive orders 
from General Meade assigning him to his position — in substance 
to continue Hancock's left and cover Round Top' — it is also true 
that such position was untenable. It was low, swampy ground, 
entirely commanded at short rifle range by the Emettsburg ridge, 
which commanding ground it was the enemy's intention to gain 
by Longstreet's attack. Sickles, knowing that the ground as- 
signed him offered no advantage for attack or defence, with the 
instinct of the true soldier, i)romptly advanced his corjis and oc- 
cupied that important commanding ground, and there received the 
enemy's attack. He fought his corps of 10,000 splendidly, losing 
in killed and wounded 4,280 — and held it against Longstreet's 
30,000 until Meade sent reinforcements, and by occupying both 
Round Tops made our left secure. 



I 



39 

" I claim that General Sickles, in promptly seizing the Emetts- 
burg ridge, instead of allowing the enemy to gain that vantage 
ground, showed the highest soldierly qualities." — St. Paul and 
Minneapolis Pioneer Press, Sunday, 29th August, 1886. 

(Note to "Smitten by idiocy," line 31, page 16.) A great 
many commanders-in-chief exercise as little influence, or not much 
more, upon the successes attributed to their ability and force than 
the old Exemplar-Muscovite, who was hailed as the conqueror, in 
181 2, of the Corsican-French-Attila. The fact is, " History, that 
vast Mississippi of lies," on its freshets or floods floats high the 
lighter wood, while the heavier and more valuable is always either 
concealed in the turbid flow or partially if not altogether sub- 
merged. 

[Fatality. — "So far as their own free will was concerned, Na- 
poleon and Alexander contributed no more by their actions to the 
accomplishment of such or such an event than the private soldier 
who was compelled to fight for them as a recruit or a conscript. 
Indeed, how could it be otherwise ? For the fulfilment of their 
will, which apparently ruled the course of the world, the concur- 
rence was needed of an infinite number of factors, all the thousands 
of individuals who were the active instruments of their purpose — 
all these soldiers, ready to fight or to transport cannon and victuals 
— had severally to consent to obey the orders of two feeble human 
units, and their obedience was the result of endlessly varied and 
complicated motives. 

" Fatalism is the only clew to history when we endeavor to 
understand its illogical phenomena; or, shall we say, those phe- 
nomena of which we see the causation but darkly, and which only 
seem the more illogical the more earnestly we strive to account 
for them. * * * 

" The life of man is twofold — one side of it is his own personal 
experience, which is free and independent in proportion as his in- 
terests are lofty and transcendental; the other is his social life, as 
an atom in the human swarm which binds him down with its laws 
and forces him to submit to them. For although a man has a 
conscious individual existence, do what he will he is but the in- 
conscient tool of history and humanity. The higher he stands on 
the social ladder, the more numerous the fellow beings whom he 
can influence, the more absolute his power, the more clearly do 
we perceive the predestined and irresistible necessity of his every 
action. 

" The heart of kings is in the hands of God. Kings [all Rulers 
and Leaders in fact] are the slaves of history. 

" History — that is to say, the collective life of the aggregate of 
human beings — turns each moment of a monarch's life to account, 



40 

and binds kings to its own en(is."^^War and Peace," second series. 
Harper's Franklin Stjuare Library, No. 521, page 46 (i).] 

(Note * * line 18, page 18.) [The influence of the majority 
of generals, so lauded, upon the victories attributed to their judg- 
ment and gallantry, about answers to the picture descriptive of 
the Russian commander-in-chief, the idol of the people, at Boro- 
dino: 

" Koutouzow, with his head bent and sunk all into a heap, 
from his own weight, sat all day where Pierre had seen him in the 
morning, on a bench covered with a rug; he gave no orders, but 
merely approved or disapproved of what was suggested to him. 

'"That is it — yes, yes, do so,' he would say; or, 'Go and see, 
my good friend, go and see!' or, again: 'That is of no use; we 
must wait.'" — Tolstoi's "War and Peace," Series III., I., 84.] 

[Note to line 10, page 19, "Fording of the Susquehanna." 
— "As to the coal-mountain expedition [/. e., irruption into the 
mining districts of Pennsylvania] and the paralytic effect it might 
have produced, it seems to me you are right. As to the fact that 
people confound 2,basis\\'\'^\ a base line, you are right. As to there 
being as good a basis for provisions before as behind Lee, you are 
right. As to a basis for a supply of ammunition, I don't know. As to 
crossing the Susquehanna, I once 7£v?/^d'rf' along the Susquehanna from 
Wilkesbarre to Havre-de-Grace. There is not, I fancy, /// the xcorld 
another river of such great breadth which is so shallow. Fordabie with 
short intetvals, one might say, everywhere until within Jive miles of 
Havre-de-Grace (Port Deposit), I should say there would have been 
little more difficulty in crossing hei,ow Columbia than above //, and 
what with our being able to send gunboats into the Delaware, 
possibly the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal might have been 
used for small ones ; and with the sort of angle into which he 
would have entered, it seems to me, Lee would have run a tre- 
mendous risk in going to Philadelphia without first beating Meade's 
army. 

" For us, as you mention, there was always that tremendous 
clog on the neck, of defending Washington. If the original plan 
of having there ^. permanent garrison of 40,000 men had been fol- 
lowed out, and the place had been made a grand camp of instruc- 
tion, it would not have been so. But, to my mind, everything that 
depended on the War Department was managed as only civilians, 
and pohticians at that, would have managed it; /. e., worse than it 
could have been managed by any honest errors. It was one great 
trouble with the August, 1862, campaign that Washington must 
be defended by the army ' in the field. 

" But, after all, as you say, the Southern troops were (in esse) 
the best, excepting, of course, the artillery. Iw posse, I think, ours 



41 

were the best, if we could have got as good officers; as good, that 
is by the definition as to getting work out of the men. Their [the 
Rebel] officers were the best, and as marksmen, I think, their 
men were our superiors /;/ general. Richmond was no clog to 
them, for they could depend on the citizens to garrison it. Their 
War Department had a bad man, I fear, but a soldier (Davis 
[meaning in his exercise of absolute power over every department]) 
at its head. They had no Halleck, timid and rash and an ignoramus, 
to baulk their generals and select to gratify his animosities. Man- 
gold [the Prussian critic on the American Civil War] says Lee was 
" naturally disposed to take risks," and Lee must have, at least, 
fancied [or conceived there would be] difficulties in this case 
[his sortie of 1863]. Possibly the loss of Jackson made the dif- 
ference. Little doubt Jackson would have marched on Philadel- 
phia. 

*' Under military bridges have you ever considered those Mc- 
Dowell says he and Haupt threw across Potomac Creek and 

in nine days four stories of trestle and crib-work, and for long 

carrying railway trains?" General W P W to 

General de P. July, 1866.] 



hood's report on GETTYSBURG.* 

"Accordingly my troops moved out of camp, crossed the Ra- 
pidan about the 5th June, 1863, and joined in the general move 
in the direction of the Potomac. We crossed the river about the 
middle of the same month, and marched into Pennsylvania. Hill's 
and Ewell's Corps were in advance, and were reported to be in 
the vicinity of Carlisle. Whilst lying in camp, not far distant from 
Chambersburg, information was received that Ewell and Hill were 
about to come in contact with the enemy near Gettysburg. My 
troops, together with McLaw's Division, were put in motion upon 
the most direct road to that point, which, after a hard march, we 
reached before or at sunrise on the 2d of July. So imperative had 
been tlie orders to hasten forward with all possible speed that, on 
the march, my troops were allowed to halt and rest only about 
two hours, during the night from the ist to the 2d of July. 

"I arrived with my staff" in front of the heights of Gettysburg 
shortly after daybreak, as I have already stated, on the morning 
of the 2d of July. My division soon commenced filing into an 
open field near me, where the troops were allowed to stack arms 
and rest until further orders. A short distance in advance of this 
point, and during the early part of that same morning, we were 
both engaged, in company with Generals Lee and A. P. Hill, in 

♦ This is a note to line 31, page 16. 



42 

observing the position of the Fwrerals. General Lee — with coat 
buttoned to the throat, sabre-belt buckled around the waist, and 
field-glasses pending at his side — walked up and down in the shade 
of the large trees near us, halting now and then to observe the 
enemy. He seemed full of hope, yet, at times, buried in deep 
thought. Colonel Freemantle, of England, was ensconced in the 
forks of a tree not far off, with glass in constant use, examining 
the lofty position of the Federal army. 

'"General Lee was, seemingly, anxious you should attack that 
morning,' he remarked to me. 'The enemy is here, and if we do 
not whip him, he will whip us. You [Longstreet] thought it better 
to await the arrival of Pickett's Division — at that time still in the 
rear — in order to make the attack; and you said to. me, subse- 
quently, whilst we were seated together near the trunk of a tree : 
'The General is a littlenervous this morning; he wishes me to 
attack; I do not wish to do so without Pickett. I never like to 
go into battle with one boot off.'" See Maj.-Gen. S. W. Crowford's 
Testimony, Gen. de Peyster's " Soldiers' Monument Inaugural Ad- 
dress." Pages 94-103. 

" Thus passed the forenoon of that eventful day, when in the 
afternoon — about three o'clock — it was decided to no longer await 
Pickett's r^ivision, but to proceed to our extreme right and attack 
up the Emmetsburg road. McLaws moved off, and I followed 
with my division. In a short time I was ordered to quicken the 
march of my troops, and to pass to the front of McLaws. 

"This movement was accomplished by throwing out an ad- 
vanced force to tear down fences and clear the way. The instruc- 
tions I received were to place my division across the Emmetsburg 
road, form line of battle, and attack. Before reaching this road, 
however, I had sent forward some of my picked Texan scouts, to 
ascertain the position of the enemy's extreme left flank. They soon 
reported to vie tJiat it rested upon Round Top Mountain; that the 
country was open, and that I could march through an open wood- 
land pasture around Round Top, and assault the enemy in flank and 
rear; that their wagon trains were packed in rear of their line, and 
were badly exposed to our attack in that directioti. As soon as I ar- 
rived upon the Emmetsburg road, I placed one or two batteries 
in position and opened fire. A reply from the enemy's guns soon 
developed his lines. His left rested on or near Round Top, with 
line bending back and again forward, forming, as it were, a con- 
cave line, as approached by the Emmetsburg road. A consider- 
able body of troops was posted in front of their main line, between 
the Emmetsburg road and Round Top Mountain. This force 
[Third CorpsJ was in line of battle upon an eminence near a peach 
orchard. 



43 

" I found that, in making the attack according to orders, viz.: up 
the Emmetsburg road, I should have first to encounter and drive off 
this advanced Hne of battle ; secondly, at the base and along the 
slope of the mountain, to confront immense boulders of stone, so 
massed together as to form narrow openings, which would break our 
ranks and cause the men to scatter whilst climbing up the rocky 
precipice. I found, moreover, that my division would be exposed 
to a heavy fire from the main line of the enemy [to which the Third 
Corps was advanced in echelonj in position on the crest of the 
high range, of which Round Top was the extreme left, and, by 
reason of the concavity of the enemy's main line, that we would 
be subject to a destructive fire in flank and rear, as well as in front; 
and deemed it almost an impossibility to clamber along the 
boulders up this steep and rugged mountain, and, under this 
number of cross-fires, put the enemy to flight. I knew that, if the 
feat was accomplished, it must be at a most fearful sacrifice of as 
brave and gallant soldiers as ever engaged in batde. 

" The reconnoissance of my Texas scouts, and the development 
of the Federal lines, were effected in a very short space of time; 
in truth, shorter than I have taken time to recall and jot down 
these facts, although the scenes and events of that day are as clear 
to my mind as if the great battle had been fought yesterday. I 
was in possession of these important facts so shortly after reach- 
ing the Emmetsburg road, that I considered it my duty to report 
to you [Longstreet], at once, my opinion that it was unwise to at- 
tack up the Emmetsburg road, as ordered, and to urge that you 
allow me to turn Round Top, and attack the enemy in flank and 
rear. Accordingly, I despatched a staff"-ofiicer, bearing to you my 
request to be allowed to make the proposed movement on account 
of the above stated reasons. Your reply was quickly received, 
'General Lee's orders are to attack up the Emmetsburg road.' 1 
sent another officer to say that I feared nothing could be accom- 
plished by such an attack, and renewed my request to turn Round 
Top. Again your answer was, 'General Lee's orders are to attack 
up the Emmetsburg road.' During this interim, I had continued 
the use of the batteries upon the enemy, and had become more 
and more convinced that the Federal line extended to Round 
Top, and that I could not reasonably hope to accomplish much 
by the attack as ordered. In fact, it seemed to nie the enemy oc- 
CJipied a position by Jiature so strong — I may say impregnable — that, 
independently of their flank fire, they could easily repel our attack 
by merely throwing and rolling stones down the mountain side as 
we approached. 

"A third time I despatched one of my staff" to explain fully in 
regard to the situation, and suggest that you had better come and 



44 

look lor yourself. I selected, in t^^instance, my adjutant-general, 
Colonel Harry Sellers, whom you know to be, not only an officer 
of great courage, but also of marked ability. Colonel Sellers re- 
turned with the same message, ' General Lee's orders are to attack 
up the Emmetsburg road.' Almost simultaneously, Colonel Fair- 
fax, of your staff, rode up and repeated the al)ove orders. 

"After this urgent protest of entering the battle of (Gettysburg 
according to instructions — which protest is the first and only one 
I ever made during my entire military career — I ordered my line 
to advance and make the assault. [J. W. de P. worked out the 
same idea correctly in his "Gettysburg." See Gen. Tremain's 
Testimony, 154, No. III. of " The Decisive Conflicts of the late 
Civil \\'ar or Slaveholders' Rebellion," pages 6t„ &:c., 154, &c. 
The \vork is worthy of examination, as written between summer 
of 1863 and spring of 1867, in the light of more recent and 
constantly developing revelations.] 

"As my troops were moving forward, you [Longstreet] rode 
up in person ; a brief conversation passed between us, during 
which I again expressed the fears above mentioned, and regret at 
not being allowed to attack in flank around Round Toj). J^*?""' You 
answered to this effect, ' We must obey the orders of General Lee.' 
I then rode forward witli my line under a heavy fire. In about 
twenty minutes, after reaching the Peach Orchard, I was severely 
wounded in the arm, and borne from the field. 

"With this wound terminated my participation in this great 
battle. JSf^As I was borne off on a litter to the rear, I could but 
experience deep distress of mind and heart at the thought of the 
inevitable fate of my brave fellow-soldiers who formed one of the 
grandest divisions of that world-renowned army; and I shall ever 
believe that, had I been permitted to turn Round Top Mountain, 
we would not only have gained that position, but have been able 
finally to rout the enemy. ^^^^^J 

"I am, respectfully, yours, J. B. Hood." 

Notwithstanding the seemingly impregnable character of the 
enemy's position upon Round Top Mountain, Benning's Brigade, 
in concert with the First I'exas Regiment, succeeded in gaining 
temporary possession of the Federal line; they captured three 
guns, and sent them to the rear. Unfortunately, the other com- 
mands, whose advance up a steep ascent was impecled by immense 
boulders and sharp ledges of rock, were unable to keep pace up 
the mountain side in their front, and render the necessary support. 
Never did a grander, more heroic division enter into battle; nor 
did ever troops fight more desperately to overcome the insur- 
mountable difficulties against which they had to contend, as Law, 



45 

Benning, Anderson and Robertson nobly led their brave men to 
this unsuccessful assault. General Law [? McLaws], after I was 
wounded, assumed command of the division, and proved himself, 
by his courage and ability, fully equal to the responsibilities of the 
position. 

The losses were very heavy, as shown by the reports, and have 
often caused me the more bitterly to regret that I was not permitted 
to turn Round Top Mountain. — "Advance and Retreat : Personal 
Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies." 
By J. B. Hood, Lieutenant-General in the Confederate Army. 
1880." Pages 56-60. 



(From The Soldier s Friend, March 27, 1869.) 
AFTER GETTYSBURG AND AT WILLIAMSPORT. 

" We have scotched the snake, not killed it." 

" Letting ' I dare not ' wait upon ' I would.' " — Macbeth. 

With the cheers which rang along the Union line like z.feu- 
de-joie or rolling fire of musketry, saluting the appearance, at the 
point of collision, of the commander of the victorious Army of the 
Potomac, the war-churm of the decisive battle, as our people have * 
elected to style it, at the East, ceased. The three days' contest 
was over; the sickle had strewn the field with the harvest, but 
that harvest was gleaned, not garnered. That evening, the roar of 
the wheeled-flood-tide which had hitherto flowed from east to 
west subsided into the slack-water of the repulse. When it bro^:e 
again upon the strained ear of expectancy, it was ebbing, with 
the waning moon, from east to west, thither, whence for so many 
anxious days previous it had poured. Already, under the impulse 
of the fiery Pleasanton, our cavalry, let loose, were picking up 
scattered sheafs where our army should have piled the groaning 
wains with shocks of trophies. On the 6th, back toward the 
Potomac commenced the retreat of the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia, " streaming," a confused mass, which a close pursuit would 
have soon converted into a rout. Horse, slashed and gashed; 
infantry, decimated — fought out, wrought out, and despondent ; 
artillery with almost empty ammunition-boxes and exhausted 
teams; wagons laden with the spoils of Pennsylvania; and pris- 
oners so buoyed up with the assurance of rescue, that, even 
although starving, they refused the parole .offered — nay, pressed 
upon them. "Streaming" was the expression of the toll-gate 
keepers and of the spoiled inhabitants, who beheld that flood 
amid the darkness and the rain, and under the blazing sun of mid- 
summer, toil onward through the mountain passes by which they 
had advanced, elate with faith in the star of Lee, and the con- 



46 

fidence of speedy victory overTne only host which stood be- 
tween their tattered battaHons and their triumphant revel in the 
fertile country districts and the wealthy marts and cities of the 
North. Blackened with powder and with gore ; travel-stained, 
begrimed with the soil on which they confidently hoped to 
camp on as conquerors; bemired and besmirched with the stains 
of marches, battle and travail of soul — this horde, which issued 
forth to subvert freedom, pursued its wearied way amid the shrieks 
of agony from multitudes of dead and dying, which filled the air 
with sounds of horror and the fields with hasty graves scooped 
to receive the dead cast forth from the impressed cavalcade of 
vehicles, swept together from the surrounding country to receive 
the mutilated forms of heroes; for, if ever heroism was displayed, 
it was shown by the South as well as by the North at Gettysburg : 
on the part of the South, " the poor man's fight in the rich man's 
war;" on the part of the North, the " soldiers' battle," even as was 
said of Inkerman by the most prominent general on the field, 
Sir Charles Wyndham, afterward the Hero of the Redan — Inker- 
man, the greatest of the Crimean fights, fought to defend a stretch 
of heights, ending, like Gettysburg, in the slaughterous repulse 
and defeat of hosts fierce in their championship of ideas dominant 
in the past. 

With Gregg slashing in and slicing off fragments on the 
flank, and Kilpatrick thundering with his artillery, carving with 
his cavalry, burning miles of wagons in their midst — for in the 
part he played on this occasion, Kilpatrick seemed to make a very 
sport of his brave and perilous work, very much as Mokanna 
amused himself in his forced flight — with this difference, that the 
" Veiled Prophet " was cutting down his own men, who would not 
stand up for him any longer, and Kilpatrick was cutting off" the 
enemy who could not stand up any longer as an array against 
the followers of the true faith, Liberal Institutions — the rebels 
contmued on toward the Potomac by the direct road, the chord 
of the arc along whose curve the Army of the Potomac escorted 
them, so to speak, after a partial and faint demonstration toward 
the Monterey pass against the rear guard, almost devoid of am- 
munition for its guns : so short of supplies, that Scheibert, a Prus- 
sian officer present with the rebel army, admits — corroborating 
the testimony of our General Howe, himself an artillery officer — 
that dearth of ordnance supplies rendered a retrogade compulsory 
upon Lee. " Nothing but the excessive need of ammunition de- 
termined the retreat. General R. E. Lee had not over one 
hundred charges per gun left, and could not therefore offer an- 
other battle which might last over a day. He saw himself com- 
pelled to return to his base of operations, and this — his base — was 



47 

the — Rappahannock." — "Seven Months in the Rebel States dur- 
ing the North American War." 1868. By Scheibert. Stettin, 
(Prussia), 1868. [The only copy, the author believes, in this 
country.] 

Howe swore that a captured rebel artillery officer told him 
there were not two rounds per gun left for die rear guard. Yet, 
notwithstanding, the Union army were not permitted to press the 
rebel rout. 

Around Hagerstown a series of combats ensued, most glori- 
ous to our cavalry, striving to arrest the retreating rebels and 
interpose a barrier between them and the Potomac, and cut off 
• the vast wagon-train, laden with confiscations and contributions 
which Imboden was conducting farther west, and more directly 
southward, through Greencastle, upon the ford or crossing at 
Williamsport. 

At first our cavalry had the best of it, and would have suc- 
ceeded in effecting their object had not the rebels received a stif- 
fening of infantry, which gave them sufficient backbone to enable 
them to restore their communications with the river. Here 
Providence befriended us again and arrested their crossing by 
such heavy down-pours of rain that the Potomac, ordinarily 
fordable at the usual low stage of water in the summer, flowed 
'■'■ swinuniiig^'' as Pleasanton quaintly expressed it. It was utterly 
impassable. The column detached by French, for the purpose, 
had destroyed the rebel bridges at Falling Waters. Meanwhile, 
Kelly, from West Virginia, having under him the indefatigable and 
resolute Averill, was sweeping down to intercept their line of 
retreat and cut off stragglers, and another column was advancing 
up the Peninsula upon Richmond, if for no other purpose, with 
the intent of detaining reinforcements from being sent north- 
ward. The troops with whom Averill was present did not make 
time, or rather get up in time, while the expedition toward Rich- 
mond terminated, as a participant expressed it, in a " blackberry 
raid," alluding to the profuse enjoyment of that luscious wild fruit 
with which the soldiers refreshed themselves upon their hot and 
sultry march. 

Nevertheless, the rebels were in a trap, notwithstanding their 
cavalry, starched with the first arrivals of their infantry, had frayed 
the way for the main body. The rebel exodus was arrested by 
waters, if not as wide to them, still for a time as impassable as the 
Red Sea, and though the pursuers, hke the hosts of Pharoah, 
drave heavily and came lumbering after, no miraculous way was 
open to their Moses through the waves. To pass over it, bridge 
material was needed ; it had to be sought with time, labor and 
difficulties. As thus the defeated army drew toward the Poto- 



48 

mac, their depleted numbers — the depth of whose depletion has 
never yet been vouchsafed by those who knew, and can only be 
arrived at by circumstantial evidence by tliose who had not the 
immediate means of knowing — drew toward the Potomac and 
gradually assumed that curved chain of positions, July iith-i2th, 
from nine to eleven miles, certainly ten, in extent, between its left 
wing established in the fields, 'in the air,' just west of the borough 
of Hagerstown, astraddle of the National Road or Turnpike, and 
its right on some lofty hills, and in some wooded, broken ground, 
subsiding to the Potomac below Falling Waters. As the Prussian 
eye-witness is a disinterested one at the best, and may certainly 
be set down as one partial to the rebels from his tone, his testi- 
mony at this point is very valuable. " On the nth our position 
was entrenched," says he, " because the enemy was drawing nearer 
and nearer along a front from six to eight English miles, which ap- 
peared to me a much too attenuated line for our 70,000 men, since 
it assigned only four men to every pace." If this line of six to eight 
miles was too thinly manned, how much more so was it in reality 
if Lee had only 45,000 to 60,000 men to distribute along ten to 
eleven miles of front, of whom a large number must have been 
occupied in sweeping up provisions, food having almost failed, 
and in collecting materials for the bridges which constituted the 
only ultimate hope of salvation. 

Let us again resort to Scheibert's work for a concise express- 
ion of current events: 

" Near Hagerstown, General Lee rested and waited to see 
what Meade would do — Meade did nothing." 

Again alluding to Lee's thin lines, he intimates, quoting: 
" Colonel Long, of the rebel staff, said smiling, that: ' Since Frede- 
ricksburg, the Yankees had a most prodigious respect for such 
lines of rifle-pits.' " 

It has often been stated that a certain hill, about at the centre 
of therebelline and opposite St. James' College, was the key to their 
position; that thence their lines could be enfiladed northward to 
their left and westward to their right. Its occupation in force by 
them was a strong if not the strongest motive for withholding an 
attack, because it was averred that it rendered that portion of 
Lee's position unattackable. Concede this, and the failure to 
attack becomes incomprehensible, because General Pleasanton 
declares that, "On the day of the council (July 12th), the brigade 
of cavalry that was in front of General Slocum's command, under 
Colonel (Huey, not) Henry (a young Quaker from Philadelphia), 
of the (8th) Pennsylvania Cavalry, near St. James' College, drove 
in the enemy and reported to me (Pleasanton), that he could have 
held, NOT carried, as his language was erroneously taken down, 



49 

that position, but that General Slocum had ordered him to halt 
for fear of bringing on a general engagement." When he was 
withdrawn, the rebels occupied that point in force and garnished 
it very heavily with artillery. "The enemy afterward brought a 
strong force," continued Pleasonton, " there, to hold that point." 
Demoralized in everything but courage, the rebels may have been 
said to have " bluffed " us off, until they had improvised bridges, 
and then, in the midst of pouring rain and bitter cold and un- 
seasonable weather, the withdrawal took place. The outposts 
were first called in on the night of i3th-i4th. This night was 
pitch dark ; a man could not see his hand before his very eyes. 
Horses stuck fast — men mired. Ice-cold rain fell, and beyond the 
river the wheels sunk down to the hubs and [roads] were " so cram- 
med," to use Scheibert's words, " that no one could get along." 
Brevet Colonel W. H. Paine corroborates this, particularly the 
cold. "The ground," he says, "on the dark, dismal morning of 
the 14th, had the appearance in places of being frozen from the 
hail or sleet of the previous night." But it is needless to dwell 
upon what seemed a calamity, which honest common-sense Lin- 
coln looked upon as such, and expressed himself in a homely 
way, which, however pregnant with truth, to repeat, might shock 
the pious-minded. Afterward he spoke to the same effect, but 
in more orthodox language. In either case, he was right. The 
nation felt as he did, and the military critic can only unite with 
the poet in wishing for "one hour of Dundee" at that crisis; or 
with Campbell for the " Bruce of Bannockburn." But it needs 
not the flight of poetry to find fitting words. In opposition to the 
remark sworn to by Warren, in answer to the question, "What, in 
your opinion, as a military man, would have been the effect of a 
general assault upon the enemy's position there by the river ? " 
" I think we should have cut them all to pieces ; that 's my opin- 
ion." It is set down that Meade observed that " if the enemy fell 
back across the river (the Potomac), he could foftow them into 
their own country and give them battle, under probably as favor- 
able circumstances as were there presented to him — that is, he 
thought, if he lost that opportunity, he could have another one." 
How differently" Marshal Forwards," the "old Blucher," would 
have answered, even as he spoke out the honest convictions of a 
soldier after his Gettysburg victory, on the Katzbach : "You must 
pay no attention to the complaints of cavalry" (or even of starved 
and exhausted infantry), "for when so great a result as the obli- 
teration of a whole army of the enemy can be attained, the State 
can well sacrifice a few hundred horses which fall dead from fa- 
tigue. The neglect to utilize a victory to the uttermost involves, 
as an inevitable consequence, the fighting of a new battle, in which 



50 

everything done (or won) may be undone (or lost)." — [Blucher to 
York, 31st August, 1813. — Scherr., III., 159. 

" The General-in-Chief," is the comment of the distinguished 
Miitfling, " had shown that he well knew how to seize the proper 
moment for passing from a prudent defence to a bold attack, 
which must produce great results." After the battle, he had done 
everything to instigate them all to exert their utmost strength in 
the jjursuit ; and his words — " with some bodily exertion now, you 
may spare a new battle " — had turned out true. — " Passages from 
My Life and Writings." By Baron von Muffling. London, 1853, 
page 327. 

The most inexplicable phase of the escape of Lee across 
the Potomac, on the morning of June 14th, 1863, is the total 
ignorance within the Union lines that any such retrograde move- 
ment was in progress. As before mentioned, it was a night of 
inky darkness and ice-cold, beating rain. Following the sinuosi- 
ties of the rough and miry roads, some of the rebel trooi)s and 
artillery had to move from ten to twelve miles from their left 
wing, west of Hagerstown to the bridge at Falling Waters. [The 
distances in this article have been submitted to Colonel W. H. 
Paine, U. S. Volunteers, Topographical Staff, and have met with 
his entire approval.] In such obscurity, and amid such difficulties, 
it must have taken the enemy's troops the whole night to over- 
come that distance. The rebel outposts were first withdrawn in 
the night. The sun rose at ten minutes before 5 A. M. The rebel 
bridge was not taken up until i p. m. No move appears to have 
been contemplated before 7 a. m. Our cavalry attacked between 
8 and 10.30 a. m. What was our army doing between sunrise 
and noon? — seven hours. Where were our spies, scouts and 
pickets? Ought we not to have made a sharp reconnoissance 
early that morning ? How was it that we saw nothing and 
heard nothing ? Although there is a great deal of wood in that 
district, there tre very extensive clearings which are commanded 
by heights, which present extensive views ; moreover, the country, 
although rolling, subsides toward the river. In active campaign- 
ing, in the presence of an enemy, with the expectation of a colli- 
sion, a well-organized army ought to keep a bright lookout, and, 
where it cannot ^cc, feel for the enemy. The inactivity of those few 
hours, on that eventful morning, j>resent more of the incompre- 
hensible than any other period of the war. Paine records in his 
"Journal," 14th July, Tuesday: " Mortified by the report that the 
rebels have crossed the Potomac in the night and left. All the corps 
were to advance at 8 a. m." Afterwards he added: "Was cha- 
grined that the rebels had all cros.sed the Potomac. ^^Our troops 
are all advancing very rapidly now the enemy has gone ! ".^^J 



51 

It has been argued that, even if our generals had been aware 
that Lee was withdrawing, the broken country, within the arc of 
the rebel line, presented admirable positions for troops accustomed 
to " bushwhacking " to arrest the pursuit of masses dislocated by the 
accidents of the ground. This would be true if the retreating 
forces had been as well supplied and fed as their opponents, or if 
the country had offered commanding ridges, on which to make a 
stand, such as afforded some excuse after Gettysburg. 

In the first place, Frederic, at Torgau, in 1760, and Napo- 
leon in his " Forest Fights," in 1809, obtained the most briUiant ad- 
vantages over superior forces, in selected positions, under exactly 
identical circumstances. But this is not all; the ground did not 
favor the rebels. The country fell away in successive waves, and 
gradually contracted toward the two points of crossing at Williams- 
port and Falling Waters, within the segment formed by the curve 
of Lee's earthworks, and his line of retreat from his left to Williams- 
port, and from his right to Falling Waters. The rebel columns 
must have drawn together, and men, horses, artillery, and trains 
have become huddled as they crowded down to the ford and to 
the bridge. Then and there, at the crisis, they must have been 
exposed to a concentric fire from the last range of heights, like 
that poured upon the French right at Waterloo, which high 
ground dominated every avenue of escape. (See anecdote of 
Lincoln and Meade, pages 52 and 53.) 

Here again the suggestion of such a plunging fire has been 
met by a counter-argument that the heights on the Virginia shore, 
beyond the Potomac, command the ridge on this, the eastern, 
the Maryland bank. Grant this; but how long would it have 
taken a superior artillery, amply supplied with ammunition, to 
silence, drive off, or destroy an inferior artillery, very short of 
ammunition, especially when the rebel generals themselves ad- 
'mitted that a contest between the two artilleries " was a farce," 
always ending to the disadvantage of the rebels, as was invari- 
ably demonstrated during the Maryland campaign of September, 
1862, but never so pointedly as in the trial between our batteries 
around the Cemetery and the rebel guns on Benner's Ridge, on 
the second day of Gettysburg. It did not take twenty minutes 
for the former, after they got the range, to dispose of the latter, 
and cover their position with wrecks and mutilations. A few 
years hence, when this escape of Lee's is criticised by military 
writers, it will rank with that of the Prince de Vaudemont, in 
1795, from before Marshal Villeroy, in which the great William 
declared the Prince had "shown himself a greater master of his 
art than if he had won a pitched battle " — a retreat of which the 
success ranks among some of the inexphcable marvels recorded 
here and the^re in the annals of military operations. Anchor. 



At one time it was intended to greatly augment this pamphlet 
with interesting notes and trustworthy authorities, but as new 
works appear and are welcomed by public opinion as guiding lights 
when they are mere will-o'-the-whisps, it seems useless to endeavor 
to present the truth. Most of our histories are mere efforts of 
memory, or offsprings of prejudice or partiality, or bids for public 
favor, or panegyrics worthy of the venal writers of the Lower Em- 
pire. History is unworthy of acceptance which cannot appeal to 
the law and the testimony. In regard to the trustworthiness of 
long deferred />(>sf /ac/o statements, a writer on historical subjects 
is justified in feeling the strongest doubt of any such assertion 
not based on memoranda made at the moment. Strong men's 
memories have often been found to be utterly at variance with their 
diaries; so much so that one who has had occasion to compare 
the two has become pretty well convinced that not more than 
in one case out of one thousand is human memory — unassisted by 
notes made at the time and upon the spot — trustworthy after the 
lapse of a few years. It is this fact, not absolute black-hearted 
falsehood, that makes men so reckless in their assertiveness, and 
in the Sickles controversy, which has aroused so many advocates, 
champions and antagonisms, men state what they wish to believe, 
not because they desire or intend to tell untruths or pervert, but 
because the human memory is such a curious thing that often, 
through much thinking on a subject, wishes become realities to 
the imagination, and what would originally have been rejected as 
false eventually assumes the form and force of tnith. So it is with 
everything connected with or dependent upon the frailties of our 
being. As the Romans said, "Times change, and we change with 
them." 

As a further evidence of the difficulty of arriving at the bed- • 
rock facts, take the following anecdote, which has been related again 
and again, in regard to the telegram which Lincoln is said to have 
sent privately to Meade when he came up with Lee after Gettys- 
burg, at Williamsport, 12th July, 1863. It is derived, for one, from 
the lips of a distinguished Major-General, remarkably careful in 
his statements and not prejudiced against Meade. He afterwards 
asked me to recall and record my recollections of what long since 
occurred, to assist in ferreting out the truth. It is stated that not 
only was this telegram known to have existed, but that it had been 
actually shown, when written, to a gentleman of high position and 
the largest opportunities, still living. The story is this. Lincoln tele- 
graphed to Meade, 12th July, 1863, to attack Lee ''peremptorily^' 
cost what it might, and if he failed to produce the telegram as his 



53 

excuse and justification ; but, if he succeeded, to destroy the tele- 
gram and take all the glory of the victory to himself— and that 
Meade had not the stuff in him to do so. 

Injustice, the suppression or distortion of facts, the disappear- 
ance or destruction of documents, accidental or wilful, have suc- 
ceeded in elevating Grant and Lee, Sherman, Meade, Sheridan, 
Hancock, Schofield, and others, at the expense of George H. 
Thomas, Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, and others, as well as 
some on lower planes who, sick and sad at injustice and ingrati- 
tude, sleep in comparatively unknown and unnoted graves. 

As FrankWilkeson observes in his "Recollections," "The history 
of the fighting to suppress the Slaveholders' Rebellion, thus far writ- 
ten [January, 1887], has been the work of commanding generals." 
" Most of this war history has been written to repair damaged or 
wholly ruined military reputations." "And it is susceptible of de- 
monstration that the almost ruinous delay in suppressing the Re- 
bellion and restoring the Union, the deadly campaigns year after 
year, the awful waste of the best soldiers the world has seen, and 
the piling up of the public debt into the billions, was wholly due 
to West Point influence and West Point commanders." There is 
a very large percentage of truth in the last sentence, applicable 
South as well as North; but, without due consideration, it, never- 
theless, conveys a very false impression. West Point is a close 
corporation, like a college of priests regarding all outside merit as 
heretical and damnable; but there are exceptions to the rule, such 
as George H. Thomas, Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, Abner 
Doubleday, &c., with McClellan and his Gefolge, and lots of others, 
too numerous to mention, Wilkeson was justified in a bitterness 
founded on what he saw and suffered; but a West Point, or rather 
West Points, are necessary to a country to prepare officers for the 
routine of military life, and with all its evils and even with all its de- 
relictions — for through esoteric influence the cruellest wrongs have 
been committed — an academy, or academies, must be maintained 
for thorough education in the military art and science. How to 
provide against its hierarchical secret brotherhood, its " union is 
strength," is a problem yet to be solved and very difficult of so- 
lution. The legislator who can devise the ways and means to 
eliminate the evil or neutralize its poison, and yet retain all the 
good, will, indeed, be a public benefactor. There is one officer 
perfectly competent to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, a fearless writer when aroused, a close observer, a 
clear, concise and classical author when he pleases, who might rec- 
tify many errors in history were he not " cribbed, cabined and 
confined," shut up, enveloped, impregnated with a hierophantic 
reverence for that awful humbug of sanctity, West Point. Mat- 



54 

thew Arnold, quoting Homer, ob^ves, " Wide is the range of 
words ! words may make this way or that way." Indeed, they 
may, and they have been misapphed, as for one instance already 
alluded to, to elevate Meade and to defame Sickles at Gettysburg. 
Again, to restrict high command to West Point is a great injustice 
to genius and talent at large; for Goethe was perfectly justified in 
" feeling so strongly how much the discipline of a great public life 
and of practical affairs has to do with intelligence." "What else 
is Culture," he asks, "but a higher conception of political and 
military relations ?" How a party, or faction, or hierarchy, apply- 
ing the term to administrative and military as well as priestly or- 
ganization, can get the control so as to act almost independently 
of the wishes of the nation and its head, is shown by the attested 
fact that Christina, Queen of Sweden, to bring about the Peace of 
Westphalia, had to conspire against her ministry and military chiefs 
and actually to gather together a party of her own, a secret adminis- 
tration within a recognized administration, and to send a repre- 
sentative of her own to the Congress at Osnabruck to checkmate 
and traverse the plans of a colleague selected and accredited by 
the ministry and the ruling party of the country. The ability of 
Adler Salvius accomplished all that the Queen desired ; whether 
wisely or unwisely is not here in question. The anecdote is told 
simply to show that a class or caste like that which West Point 
produces can even dispute the will of autocracy and of the people, 
until overthrown or neutralized by greater astuteness coupled 
with unusual ability. 

The preceding considerations will serve as an introduction to 
some common sense views of 

THE UNION OF PRACTICE AND THEORY IN MILITARY MATTERS. 

What now follows are the remarks of a bridge builder who did 
not have the slightest idea of their suitable application to the 
Carrying on of War. Nevertheless their pertinence invites attention. 
The combination of theory and practice must be superior to 
either by itself The professional soldier is the mechanic ; he may 
handle his tools admirably without being able to construct any- 
thing beyond the scope of his daily labor. The architect who 
plans the structure is the theorist who, in a great measure, learns 
his science from books. He may never have handled a tool, nor 
have entered a workshop, and, notwithstanding, be a proficient. 
The same holds good with regard to marine and military matters. 
Some of the most wonderful steps in advance in both, did not ori- 
ginate with professional men, but with theorists, or thinkers, ob- 
servers as well as students. A highly gifted man like LucuUus or 
Spinola or Phipps may take the command of an army and make a 



55 

far more truly great captain than myriads of men who have risen 
from the ranks to be generals by routine or through a West Point. 
They might not be able to make an army, but they might be com- 
petent to handle an army far better than those who made it. Poet 
are born and so are generals : likewise all men exceedingly gre; 
in their hne ; but as long as professionals, like the graduates of a We; 
Point, continue to be considered by the people the only class fro 
which great generals can be drawn, so long will no man, even 
as gifted as either of the few of the first class of great captain 
have a chance to exhibit his innate powers. West Point ai 
Regulars are, in so far, no better than the Knights of Labor, 
that they will allow no man to enter into competition with the 
or maintain himself if they can prevent it. 

" But, if a union of talents were once accomplished, the me 
chanic, in the course of his practical experiments, would be assistet. 
by the sound calculations of the mathematician, and his wor^ 
would be sooner perfected. Also, the mathematician would u 
doubtedly find no small degree of profit from the practical d 
monstrations which the ingenious mechanic alone is able to p 
duce." [In a few words, successful result is the child of prac 
and theory.] 

" Olinthus Gregory, in the preface to his excellent w 
Statics, illustrates this subject in a manner which ought n* 
here omitted. There are few artists but will admire hi 
and agree with his sound remarks. 

He begins thus: "For some years I have seen, or 
have seen, and often regretted, that a forbidding d' 
awkward jealousy seem to subsist between the theo'> 
practical men engaged in the cultivation of mec^ 
country [England], and it is a desire to shorten th' 
to eradicate this jealousy, that has been a princi' 
the execution of the following work. 

" I have by long habit, combined, perhaps, a 
prejudices, been much delighted with theinvesti 
but, while I prize the deductions of sound th 
person, and rest as firmly upon them ; yet 
forget that, as all general principles imply th- 
tion, it would be highly injudicious not t 
practical applications as approximatior 
must be supplied, as, indeed, the prir 
duced from experience. 

" Habits of abstraction and theo' 
cess ; and crude experience without 
ductive of essential good. 

" But as an eminent philosop) 




'Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Min<l,' pages 221, &r.], 
for whose talents and virtues I entertain great respect, remarks, 
Care should be take to guard against both these extremes, and 
) unite habits of abstraction with habits of business, in such a 
•anner as to enable men to consider things either in general or in 
nail, as the occasion may require. Whichever of these habits 
iy happen to gain an undue ascendant over the mind, it will 
cessarily produce a character limited in its powers, and fitted 
.ly for j)articular exertion. When theoretical knowledge and 
actical skill are happily combined in the same person, the intel- 
:tual power of man appears in its full perfection, and fits him 
jUally to conduct with a masterly hand the details of ordinary 
usiness, and to contend successfully with the untried difficulties 
f new and hazardous situations. In conducting the former, mere 
;xperience may frequently be a sufficient guide, but experience 
nd speculation must be combined together to prepare us for the 
';ter.' ' Expert men,' says Lord Bacon, 'can execute and judge 
particulars, one by one ; but the general counsels, the plots, 
1 the marshalling of affairs, comes best from those that are 
ned. Admitting the truth of these observations, it will thence 
w, that theoretical and practical men will most effectually pro- 
their mutual interests, not by affecting to despise each 
ut by blending their efitbrts ; and further, that an essen- 
ce will be done to mechanical science, by endeavoring to 
the scattered rays of light they have separately thrown 
-egion of human knowledge, converge to one point.' 
bove elegant and impartial hints, afforded us by the 
='nd to science, Olinthus Gregory, merit the author's 
md ardent wishes, that they may be received by the 
> and mechanics of the United States, with all that 
^gard, a conviction of their truth must ever in- 
Architect and Landscape Gardener." New 
"ace xxiii.-xxvi. 

RIDGE OVER LAKE CAYUGA. 

dge over the Cayuga lake, in New York 

■ road from Albany to Niagara, stands on 

'estles, each consisting of three posts con- 

' four braces. The posts are sunk to hard 

about thirty feet from the surface of 

V-five feet apart. T/ie ^vhole length of 

\ it cost twenty thousand dollars." — 

"reatise on Bridge Architecture, in 

^f the Flying Pendant Lever Bridge 

Pope, Architect and Landscape 

^ages 128-29. 




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